


A Frost of Cares

by houseofcannibals



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Prison, Angst, Crazy Will Graham, Gen, Hannibal did not kill the judge at Will's trial, Hannibal is a Bastard, Manipulative Will, Mental Health Issues, This hurts, Will is on death row
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-05-03 01:24:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 84,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5271326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/houseofcannibals/pseuds/houseofcannibals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will Graham has been on death row for almost three years, falsely convicted of crimes that he knows were committed by Hannibal Lecter, but nobody will believe him. Alone and frightened, with nothing but the company of the dead, Will is struggling to hold onto his sanity. And Hannibal Lecter has not visited him yet. But he will come. Will knows he will come, in the end.</p><p>AU in which Hannibal did not kill the judge at Will's murder trial in 'Hassun', leading to Will being wrongfully sentenced and sent to death row, and exploring what might happen from there. This goes to some dark places. Beware Chapter 18. </p><p>Please note, this story contains descriptions of the death penalty which some may find disturbing. I sure do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

1.  _Surviving._

_***_

 

It was always early evening and the sky was rusty pink. The breezeless air was full of life, the soft hum of insects intercut with birdcalls settling placidly over the whispering rush of water around his knees. Red leaves drifted down around him from the autumnal trees.

It was always autumn here. It had been autumn for almost three years now. He tried to ignore it, but in the back of his mind, he dreaded that the winter might come.

She stood beside him, casting her own line into the stream, her eyes bright with the promise of the lure. He didn’t always find her here, and was content to be alone, but her presence always made his heart lift. He watched the fading light play across her face, her glossy hair. She looked very small in her bulky waders. Very fragile in the vastness of the waters. But no harm could come to her; he knew that. Not here. She was safe here.

“Nothing is biting today,” he said.

Abigail offered a sympathetic smile. “Does it matter if anything bites? You know they’re not real.”

His shoulders lifted in a silent chuckle. “I know. I haven’t gone completely crazy.”

“Not yet,” she said, softly.

Will looked down his line to where it vanished into the opal waters. “I’m not going to go crazy. I’ve managed to hold onto myself this far.”

“Maybe it would be better if you did,” she said. He could feel her eyes on him. “It might make all of this easier. You wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore of what’s to come.”

“I’m not… I’m not afraid.”

“Then you should be.”

He let out a shaky breath, his eyes drifting across the water, along the bank. Somewhere deep in the thicket of trees, he knew, a feathered stag paced; he caught glimpses of it now and then, heard its hooves cracking twigs in the underbrush. Nothing there now, only the gradually gathering darkness. Night never completely fell here. Perhaps one day it would, and the darkness would swallow him whole.

“It won’t… It won’t go that far,” he said. “ _He_ won’t let it go that far. He won’t let me… Not after everything we...”

He broke off, his lip trembling. The thrum of the insects seemed too loud now, the buffeting water against his legs a little too rapid. Something was watching from the treeline, not the feathered stag but something else, something worse, the shadow of immense antlers falling across the grass like spilt blood, white eyes over-bright in the darkness of the trees, inhuman.

“It’s been almost three years,” Abigail said, quietly. “He’s not going to do anything now. He’s abandoned you here, to this. He’s left you to die.”

“What do you care?” Will yelled, spinning round to face her. “What do you care what he does to me?”

Abigail opened her lips in a small sigh, her head tilting back as a long seam opened up across her throat and a great wash of blood coursed down her chest, too red in the fading light. Will stumbled back and almost fell in the rush of the stream, and to his horror he saw that the water was red now as far as the eye could see, red and thick and rapidly rising with each droplet that fell from Abigail – it was almost up to his chest now, _he was up to his chest in her blood._

“I don’t care, dad,” Abigail said, as the red water rose and rose around them and crested Will’s chin, filled his mouth, his nose. “I’m already dead, remember?”

Will woke up, sweating and crying, a scream perched at the back of his throat. For a moment, he was overwhelmed with a panic so black he couldn’t remember where he was. Then it came back to him, and that was almost worse than not knowing. Breathing fast, he swallowed down the hysteria, shaking violently. He didn’t want to start screaming in the night again. He didn’t want them to put him back in the punishment cell where there was no light to chase away the ghosts in his head. He didn’t think his sanity could take it.

He lay on his back on the narrow cot, his hands gripping the thin blanket, silent tears rolling down the sides of his face and wetting his ears. The cell was dark and quiet; it was either very late or very early. He had no window, so it was difficult to know with any degree of certainty. He thought about the nights when he used to walk across the flat fields which surrounded his little house in Wolf Trap, the dogs chasing each other through the stillness, the skin on his hands looking pure white in the moonlight and the frost glittering on the tall grass, the air cool in his nose and his lungs and his breath like smoke in the darkness, feeling vital and human and alive. He had not felt like that in such a very long time. Such feelings were impossible in this grey place. Here, there was only stagnation. Stagnation and death.

He sat up and rubbed his temples. He knew he would not find sleep again that night. For lack of anything better to do to take his mind off the nightmare, he dropped to the concrete floor and did push-ups until his limbs shook from the exertion. Then he crawled back onto his bed, curled his body toward the wall, and tried not to let himself cry again. He was afraid that one of these days he would be unable to stop.

Slowly, he heard the prison come to life beyond the walls of his small cell as the lights came on. The clanking of electronic locks. Shuffling and shouting. Banging on walls; toilets flushing. Radios. The rattle of the breakfast cart down the hall. He slipped out of the sweat-damp boxers and t-shirt he’d slept in and dressed reluctantly in the rapidly-greying white jumpsuit that he’d hated the first time he’d worn it and loathed now. He remembered when they’d first handed it to him along with a sorry bundle of toiletries that would compose most of his personal possessions in this place. He’d still been dressed in the suit he’d worn in court when the verdict was read, simple grey with a blue shirt underneath; they’d taken his tie before transporting him, and he’d realised dully that they were worried he might try to hang himself with it. Yet somehow, even after hearing the judge pass sentence, after witnessing Jack unable to look him in the eye and Alana unable to stop crying, after letting them take him from holding cell to van to prison in handcuffs and leg irons and chains… Somehow, the reality of it all had not hit him until they handed him that awful white jumpsuit with DEATH ROW printed across the back in black.

That night he had screamed and screamed.

He slipped into it quietly, a lump in his throat that had not cleared in three years. As he washed his face and brushed his teeth, he tried to avoid his sad reflection in the small steel mirror over the metal sink, but it was unavoidable. He was so pale these days.

A rap on the door; like a well-trained dog, he moved to accept the proffered tray as it was pushed through the slot, glad for the meagre distraction, though its contents was as unappetising as ever. A pile of oddly greyish scrambled eggs, already half cold and congealing. Some sausage meat. Two slices of unbuttered toast. A plastic cup of coffee, and one of orange juice. He ate with the tray on his knees, wolfing down the eggs and meat before settling on his bed with a book, thin pillow folded behind his back, sipping his coffee. The toast he would save until later; it was his morning routine. Routine was the only way to make sense of the monotony, to make the endless unbroken days feel real.

Time passed, as it was prone to do, coldly indifferent to the suffering of those inhabiting it. Will drank his coffee, and his juice, nibbled around the edges of the dry toast. Around mid-morning he finished the book he had been reading and flipped instead through a forensic journal that Beverly had sent to him with all its staples removed. Beverly Katz sent him a thick package of reading material once a month, every month; journals and monographs, paperback novels with a dog-eared quality that told him she bought them on mass from garage sales and thrift stores with no real concern for their contents. Never a note. He knew better than to expect one. Beverly felt an obligation to him that drove her to mail the package every month to ease her guilt; it was not a task performed out of love. She felt a burden of responsibility for missing the signs of his breakdown, but she trusted her own abilities enough not to doubt the evidence against him (and there had certainly been enough of it). She would not visit. Only the package, once a month, every month, because she couldn’t stand to think of his mind stagnating in here when she might have been able to help him before it was too late.

He sighed, putting the loose pages of the journal aside and stretching his stiff limbs. He longed for the relative freedom of the small, caged exercise yard, for the chill of the wind on his cheeks and the faint smells of trees and grass to remind him of what life existed beyond these grey walls. But it wasn’t his day for the yard. He huddled his limbs to his chest and propped his chin on his knees, feeling very small. What a strange thing, to be told when and for how long he could stand outside and raise his face, blinking, toward the sun. How many simple human experiences he had taken for granted, and now ached for with an intensity that was painful in their absence.

His mind drifted, as it so often did, to the man responsible for him being here. He tried not to think about him, but it was so difficult not to without anything else to occupy his mind. He wondered what Hannibal was doing at that moment, with a cold fury that settled in his gut like ice. Knowing that Hannibal was walking free, that he was dining on fine cuisine while Will suffered through the slop from the prison kitchen, sleeping in his own bed, mingling with Baltimore’s high society and no doubt killing covertly amongst them while another man paid for his crimes… He tried not to dwell on it, but he couldn’t help himself. His anger was all that kept him sane sometimes.

Still. The anger was better than the betrayal. The loneliness.

He had respected Dr Lecter. Enjoyed his company, even, in a way that had taken him by surprise. Being social had never been something he looked forward to, and yet he had grown to anticipate any meeting with Dr Lecter with a feeling close to eagerness. He had considered the man his friend, one of the very few he had.

He wasn’t sure what was worse – being here, or knowing that Hannibal had put him here.

The narrow little cellblock that composed death row had fallen very quiet again. Most of the inmates would be sleeping again now breakfast was over. It was the best way to pass the time, unfortunately, but Will could not bring himself to sleep longer than he had to. The nightmares were too horrifying to bear.

“Graham.” A sharp rap of knuckles on the door, and the slot at eyelevel was pulled open. “You’ve got a visitor.”

He started at the noise, surprised and confused. He did not get many visitors. His lawyer stopped by from time to time to go through the motions, discuss his dwindling appeals, shuffle some paperwork, his eyes drifting more and more frequently toward his watch and the words lost cause hanging unspoken in the air between them. The last few meetings, Will had gotten the distinct impression that the man was quietly hoping the end would come swiftly and without too much media attention. Having a client fry was always bad for business, and the execution of a murderer who’d hidden within the ranks of the FBI no less was likely to be nothing short of a circus in the press. Counsellor Brauer was looking to cut his losses and move onto the next deadbeat slasher with a target on his back. Will couldn’t really blame him.

Only one other person visited him regularly. Alana Bloom came once a month like clockwork, despite his protestations. For the first six months, it had been once a week, but he’d seen the strain it put on her. Even now, he could feel the willpower it took for her to drag herself here on her allotted day, the pain it caused her to see him like this; it reverberated uncomfortably in the air between them like the plucking of a bow too tightly strung. The faint frown lines on her forehead had become more deeply pronounced in the years he had spent here, and he had noticed that she was more and more often swapping out her cheerful patterned dresses for sombre black during her most recent visits, already unconsciously dressing for his funeral. He told her every month that she shouldn’t come back, but both knew that he was too lonely to really mean it. They would talk about everything and nothing, neither mentioning the reason he was here; it would only upset her. He knew that Alana was frightened to confront the idea that he had known what he was doing all along, that she had been so wrong about him but, like Beverly, she would not entertain his claims of innocence. Instead, she would plaster a cheery smile to her face and wrap her arms around him when she arrived and before she left, her soft body trembling slightly against his. It was the only physical contact he had these days other than rough hands on him as handcuffs were fastened or removed. And she brought pictures of the dogs. He was grateful to her for that.

But it was not Alana’s day to visit, and she would not come on another day unannounced.

_It could always be Hannibal._

He dismissed the thought with a cold shudder. It would not be Hannibal. The last time he had seen Hannibal Lecter had been at the trial, observing through the numb haze of his own shock the way Hannibal bowed his head and played pretend when the verdict was read. And he had not missed the look Hannibal shot him as he was led away, in the fleeting moment their eyes met and he saw the flash of triumph on Hannibal’s face, the satisfaction the devil feels at ruining another life and getting away with it…

It would not be Hannibal.

He wasn’t sure why Hannibal hadn’t tried to visit. The urge to gloat was surely there, and he could always fall back on the excuse that Will was his friend, that he was still trying to help him. But he had not come, nor had he written. His silence was as much a slap in the face as his gloating would have been.

It was ridiculous, and part of him hated himself for feeling this way in light of all the terrible things that Hannibal had done to him, but Will could not deny that he was hurt. To know that Hannibal had used him and discarded him without a second thought was somehow worse than believing they were still playing their deadly game with one another. He felt abandoned.

He swung his legs off the bed and stood, running a hand through his shaggy hair and trying to pretend that he wasn’t hoping to hear the name _Hannibal Lecter_ when he asked, “Who is it?”

“Says he’s a friend of yours. An Agent Jack Crawford from the FBI. Put your wrists through the slot in the door, Graham.”

The slot through which the breakfast tray had been passed to him was opened again. Will slipped his hands through, his mind elsewhere as the guards fastened handcuffs around his wrists, stepping back out of habit before they had to ask, and watching them placidly as the door to his cell was unlocked and they stepped inside. He allowed them to loop the chain around his narrow waist and cuff his ankles. He had once felt a sense of intense claustrophobia whenever they restrained him like this, but time and repetition had dulled that to reluctant familiarity.

They took him by either arm and gave him a rough nudge in the back to get him moving. The guards were not fond of him – another group of people who would not be sad to see him go, Will thought, with a sickening lurch toward something close to hysteria. It was not that he was violent (very few of the men on death row were, their sharp edges softened butter-knife dull by the lobotomy pick of tedium) but he was often difficult. His episodes were well-documented. There had been plenty of whispering amongst the other inmates when he arrived that he wasn’t legally sane enough to execute. He wondered if that was true. He knew it wouldn’t stop them.

Jack Crawford coming to visit though… That was quite unexpected. Jack had visited only once before, a week after the sentence had been passed. Will had been in bad shape, eyes puffy and red from crying, throat raw, whole body shaking and twitching. Jack had barely been able to look at him. They had been silent for a very long time, before Jack eventually put his head in his hands and said he was sorry. He was sorry he had pushed Will. Sorry he had broken him. Sorry Will had done those terrible things, and that he had ended up here instead of a padded cell at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane where he belonged.

Will had said nothing, and eventually Jack had left. There had been no point pleading his innocence. The court hadn’t believed it, why should Jack? It was too late for anyone to save him now. He couldn’t even save himself.

Jack had not visited again. Like Bev, he sent Will regular parcels out of guilt, always some books and food and small amounts of money for Will to buy things he might need at the commissary. Never a note, but Will knew where they came from. Occasionally, he caught the faint scent of thyme and garden flowers when he opened the paper, and suspected the care packages might have been put together by Bella’s hands.

He wondered what had changed. Was it possible… No, he shouldn't be thinking this way. But perhaps… Was it possible that some new evidence might have been found to challenge the case against him? Some evidence that finally, mercifully, pointed away from him and straight towards Hannibal? He could not see any other reason why Jack might be visiting him now, after all this time. Guilty as his own conscience had been, Jack had been resolute in his belief that Will had indeed committed the crimes he had been accused of. His only doubt had been as to whether Will was insane, or simply a monster.

He swallowed hard as they approached the visitation room, trying hard not to get his hopes up. Hope was a luxury he had not been able to afford for some time. His lawyer certainly advocated against it, especially recently. But maybe… maybe…

There were two spaces where visitation took place; one room where inmates could sit across from their loved ones at a table, allowed to touch within reason, to hug and hold hands, and another where they were separated by reinforced glass, forced to talk into plastic telephones to be heard. It was in this latter room that Jack had visited him last time, three years ago, and it was into here that Will was now herded. He felt his heart drop. If Jack had come to some realisation about his innocence, then the glass would not have been needed.

When he caught sight of Jack’s face, he realised how wrong he had been to indulge in any semblance of hope at all. Nothing good could have happened to make Jack look like that.

_He looks like he’s attending an execution,_ Will thought, feeling cold.

He allowed the guards to remove his handcuffs and flexed his wrists out of habit, before taking his seat on the stool opposite Jack and picking up the receiver on his end. The rows of stools were separated into individual booths by metal partitions attached to the counter which ran between them, but today he and Jack were alone in the room, besides the guard lurking by the door on Will’s side of the glass. He watched as Jack picked up his own receiver, offering a weak smile.

“How’ve you been Will?”

Will scratched his rough chin, frowning. “Well let’s see, Jack. I’ve been on death row for three years for multiple murders I didn’t commit. I spend about twenty-three hours a day in an eight-by-ten box, and I only get to shower three times a week – not today, incidentally. So, all things considered, I’d say I was doing just peachy. What do you think?”

Jack lowered his head. Will could see the pain etched into his features and felt a twinge of regret. Jack’s failure to see the truth hurt him, but it wasn’t Jack’s fault he was here. He ought to save his anger for the man who really deserved it.

“I’m alright,” Will said, sighing. “Surviving.”

“You look like shit. You’ve lost a lot of weight.”

“The food isn’t great. But I keep myself fit. There isn’t much else to do except exercise and sleep.”

“Did you get the books? I mean, I know I didn’t… But I… We… Bella and I…”

“I got them, thank you.”

Jack nodded, staring intently at the scuffed metal counter with its scattering of cigarette burns and scratchings of initials. _He can’t stand to look at me,_ Will thought, with an unpleasant twist in his gut.

“How’s Bella?”

Jack swallowed. “Surviving. I’d… I’d rather not talk about her here.”

“Fine.”

“Price and Zeller say hello,” Jack said. Will nodded, certain that the men said no such thing.

There was a stagnant silence.

“Why are you really here, Jack?” Will murmured, pushing his lank curls away from his eyes. It had been some time since his last haircut, and it was getting unruly. “You didn’t come all the way down here just to enjoy the view.”

Jack’s fingers drummed nervously on the countertop before falling still. He loosened his tie a fraction, looking deeply uncomfortable. It took him a very long time to meet Will’s eyes, and when he did, Will wished he hadn’t. Fear sliced to the very core of him.

“I wanted to be the one to tell you...”

Will’s mouth had suddenly become very dry. He was clutching the receiver so tight his knuckles were white. “What?”

But of course, he already knew. Deep down, he had known from the moment Jack showed up. There was only one thing that would have brought him here.

“They’ve set a date for your execution, Will,” Jack said quietly. “A month from now. I’m sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had the idea for this when I was sad and drunk one night several months ago, and I hadn't seen it done before (probably because it's such a depressing idea). The scene which opens 2.03 'Hassun', where Will imagines himself in the electric chair, is one of the scenes which stuck with me most from the show, and I thought it might make for an interesting story. I began writing this before season 3 aired, and the opening accidentally predicted Abigail's eventual fate in the show, whoops.
> 
> I have yet to decide what fate awaits poor Will at the end of this, or how far Hannibal will push him. Let me know what you think...
> 
> The title is taken from a 16th century poem by Chidiok Tichborne, supposedly composed the night before his execution for treason and popularly known as 'Tichborne's Elegy': "My prime of youth is but a frost of cares, / My feast of joy is but a dish of pain, /.../ And now I live, and now my life is done."
> 
> I am going by the assumption that Will would have been convicted in Virginia, as Maryland has no death penalty. My knowledge of the American legal system is limited (most of it comes from reading John Grisham novels throughout my high school years, and using the resources provided by the Death Penalty Information Centre) so there will likely be mistakes made, and I apologise in advance.


	2. Chapter 2

Three years. 

On the longest nights, when the nightmares woke him and he lay shivering and trying not to cry, feeling so trapped that he could not breathe, like a dying animal caught in a snare and slowly bleeding out… On those nights, he had wished for it to be over. When he lay wide awake in the dark listening to the faint shuffling and snores of the other inmates on his block, the sort of men that he had once put away and was now counted alongside, and knew that he would die and be remembered only with pain by those who knew him, and disgust by those who didn’t, he had hoped for it to end quickly, mercifully. As he had felt his sanity slipping away like sand through his fingers, he had wondered if it might not be better if he was already dead.

Three years with nothing to think about except what lay at the end of this nightmare, but now that it was here, he found he wasn’t ready.

He could see Jack’s mouth moving but he could hear nothing but a faint ringing in his ears. He realised after a time that the receiver had slipped from numb fingers and moved sluggishly to pick it up again. He felt as though he were moving underwater. He couldn’t breathe. 

“Will. Will.”

He gradually became aware of his name being repeated over and over, and lifted his eyes to meet Jack’s, only for the man to immediately look away. He looked ten years older than Will remembered.

“I’m so sorry, Will. I never wanted this.”

“I know,” Will murmured. He put his hand over his face. It didn’t feel real. It _couldn’t_ be real. It wasn’t possible.

As a cop, and to a lesser extent during his time consulting for the bureau, he had always known that there was a possibility that he might die in the line of duty. It was something that every person working in the field had to come to terms with, but it had never troubled him a great deal, let alone prevented him from doing his job. Death was a distant concept, like retirement; it was something everyone experienced eventually, but it felt far enough removed from the present not to matter much at all.

But this… To be told the exact date on which he would be put down like an animal… It was too much. He simply could not get his head around it. 

“I need to, um… to call my lawyer,” Will mumbled. His voice was low and raspy; his mouth felt full of cotton wool, body hot and cold all at once. He thought he might suffocate. This was a way he had not felt since he had been sick, when the encephalitis had set his mind on fire and made it hard to know who or where he was anymore, let alone what was real. But he was not sick anymore. This nightmare was very real, and there was no escaping it.

“I already called him, as soon as I heard,” Jack said. “He’s in court right now, but he promises he’ll call later. Your appeals aren’t exhausted yet. There’s still hope.”

Will nodded without conviction, swallowing thickly. “Yeah. The governor wants to appear tough on crime – he’s made his stance on capital punishment very clear, you know that. And for someone who formerly worked in law enforcement… Send out the message that no one is above the law…” He hiccupped a humourless laugh. “Letting me fry will get him re-elected.” 

“It’s not like that. This whole thing has been an embarrassment to the bureau. If you…” 

Jack faltered, closing his eyes and taking a measured breath before pressing on. 

“If you end up in the chair, Will, it’ll be a shitshow in the papers. That hack Freddie Lounds has been eating this thing up since the trial – it’s her meal ticket – and it’s only going to get worse now your death warrant has been signed.” 

It was Will’s turn to close his eyes now, the words making him feel dizzy and nauseous, but Jack continued relentlessly, leaning closer to the glass as though he might reach through and shake Will. 

“What we all want – my boss, my boss’s boss, and the governor too, I imagine – is for this thing to quietly go away,” he said, slowly and carefully, letting the impact of the words sink in. “Your death won’t look particularly good for anyone involved, and your lawyer is going to make sure the appeals court and the governor are well aware of that.”

“So my sentence might get commuted to life without parole, is that the alternative?” Will said, sitting up a little straighter and raising his head from his hand. In the ill-fitting jumpsuit, dark curls spilling over his forehead and down his pale neck, the promise of tears quivering in the corners of wide blue eyes, he looked very young, suddenly. Very small, like a child playing dress-up. Jack looked away.

“We might be able to manage that, yes. Don’t give up hope.”

Will’s lip was trembling as he struggled to keep himself together. “And then what? Hmm? I spend the rest of my life rotting in federal prison, forgotten, just swept under the rug so the bureau avoids embarrassment?”

“It’s better than the alternative.”

Will ran a hand through his unwashed hair, a gruff laugh escaping him. “Is it? You know as well as I do that former lawmen don’t do so well in general population. Would your conscience be clearer if I died with a sharpened spoon jammed in my kidney instead of strapped to the electric chair? Would you sleep better?”

Jack’s face hardened. “I sleep just fine, Will. I tried to help you. I testified on your behalf, and it almost cost me my job.”

Will’s voice was verging on hysteria now. “What a goddamned martyr you are! Saint Jack, sticking his neck out for poor mad Will Graham. You almost lost your job? I lost my _life_ , Jack.”

“You took the lives of five people – that we know of – and tried to kill Dr Lecter right in front of me, so you don’t get to play the poor mad Will Graham card anymore. You seem to forget that you are here for a reason, and even though I hate seeing you here – even though I will continue to fight on your behalf, whether you’re grateful for that or not… None of that changes what you did,” Jack finished, quietly. He saw Will’s shoulders slump, and raised a hand to rub the bridge of his nose, sighing. The headache that had been lapping dully somewhere behind his eyes since he first set foot in the building was beginning to spill over the banks of its estuary to swallow him up. He absently tapped his pockets searching for aspirin and came up empty. 

Will was sitting very still, his eyes wild and wounded. “I didn’t kill those people, Jack,” he whispered. “Cassie Boyle, Marissa Schurr, Georgia Madchen, Dr Sutcliffe. _Abigail_ … Abigail Hobbs.” His voice broke and his eyes fluttered closed for a moment. “I wouldn’t have… I _couldn’t_ have hurt her. You were looking in the wrong corner. I tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t believe me.”

“I didn’t come here for this.”

“I told you who the killer was, I told you it was him-”

“Will-”

“And now I’m in here and he’s out there – I’m in here and he’s out there, he’s _out there_ and he _will_ kill again, you’ve got to believe me!”

“WILL!” 

Will froze, shaking. He had risen slightly from his seat in his frenzy, knuckles white where they clutched the phone. He sank back down, breathing unevenly. 

“I did not come here to talk about this, and if you keep it up, I’m leaving,” Jack said. “I’ve heard everything you had to say before. So did my team, so did the jury, and its meaningless now.”

“Not to me.” Will looked up at him, his lip twitching. “Not to me. If I thought there was a chance that I could have done those things, I wouldn’t be fighting this. He tried _so hard_ to make it seem plausible, even to me. He almost made me believe it. But I know the truth now. I know. And in the end, so will you.”

“I don’t want to be having this discussion. You’ve had some traumatic news and you’re fumbling in the dark for a way out – I get that. But you heard my testimony at your trial and I stand by it. I pray every day that you didn’t know what you were doing when you committed those murders, but I don’t doubt that you _did_ commit them, and the evidence agrees with me.”

“The evidence was planted.”

“There was an _ear_ in your _stomach_. Pretty hard to plant that.”

“But not impossible.”

“There’ve been no more copycat killings since you were arrested, Will.”

“That you know of. He won’t kill the same way again. Maybe he’s even held himself back – what would I know, they don’t let me read the papers. I’m sure the prospect of me rotting in here is enough to entertain him for now. But he will kill again, sooner or later. And when I’m dead, he’ll make sure to let you know how foolish you’ve been. He won’t pass up the opportunity to gloat.”

Jack chewed his lip and fixed Will with a hard stare. 

“We both know who you’re talking about, and I’m begging you to let this go, Will. You claims against him were thoroughly investigated. We found nothing. I’m not sure if you’re delusional or just clutching at straws, but it’s dangerous and it has to stop.”

“Stop? He ruined my life and now he’s sending me to my death! How can you ask me to let that go?”

Jack’s expression had become very cold. “I won’t listen to this anymore. If you’re going to continue accusing him of your crimes, then I’ll be forced to wash my hands of you, Will. I will walk out of here and I won’t come back. Until the very end, at the.... You know.”

Will leaned forward until his nose was almost touching the scuffed glass. Spittle glistened on his trembling lip. “He did this to me – Dr Lecter did this to me! – And he made sure that no one would believe me. He did this, he killed those people, and if you’re still _foolish_ enough to let him trick you into believing he’s your friend then you deserve whatever he’ll do to you, Jack!”

Jack was on his feet and slipping back into his jacket before the name _Lecter_ had even finished leaving Will’s lips. He waited until Will had quieted, before picking up the phone again.

“Goodbye, Will. I’m sorry it’s come to this, I truly am, but that’s the way it is and I suggest you try to come to terms with it. I’ll see you in a month. At the execution.”

Will was on his feet as well as Jack turned to leave – on his feet and pounding on the reinforced glass separating them, pounding on the glass and screaming, even as the guards rushed forward to grab and restrain him –

“HANNIBAL DID THIS TO ME, _HE DID THIS_ , HE KILLED THEM ALL. LISTEN TO ME, PLEASE! HANNIBAL-”

Jack heard a door slam as Will was dragged from the room, his muffled screaming more incoherent now, and laced with dark terror as they took him away to be punished. He did not turn back. He signed out and handed back his visitor’s pass, pausing only to use the restrooms before he left. He tried to avoid his own reflection in the dirty mirror over the sinks but it was inevitable. He looked haggard. His headache throbbed. He wished he hadn’t come. 

The parking lot was quiet, the sky overcast and beginning to spit as Jack hurried back to his car. His legs felt weak. It was an immense relief to slip into the driver’s seat. He rested his forehead against the steering wheel, and felt the hand of his companion settle on his shoulder. 

“Are you alright, Jack? Perhaps I should drive.”

“No… No, I just need a moment.”

“How is Will Graham?”

Jack laughed without humour. “Will’s handling the news about as well as expected.”

“Is he still clinging to his wild theories? As coping methods go, it is dangerous. I am concerned he might be delusional – it is possible that he truly believes what he says to be true.”

“Whether or not Will Graham is delusional is of no concern to me anymore. He’s made his bed and he can lie in it.”

“Will Graham is still our friend. Regardless of the bed he’s made for himself, we have an obligation to help him for as long as we are able.”

Jack screwed his eyes shut and pressed his forehead harder into the smooth leather of the wheel. “You’re probably right, but I don’t want to think about him right now. It’s too much to process, and you didn’t _see_ him. He looked… God, he looked crazy. Have you got any aspirin?”

“Of course, I always carry some. I can understand that you might feel overwhelmed, confronting him for the first time in – what is it now, three years? I apologize for pushing.”

Jack finally raised his head and accepted the proffered pills. He swallowed them dry and managed a strained smile. “That’s alright, Dr Lecter. I’m just out of sorts. I appreciate you coming down here with me today – I’ve been dreading this day since the beginning.”

“It was no trouble.”

“Will you see him? Before the end, I mean. I know you haven’t visited yet.”

Hannibal sighed and brushed a stray hair from his brow, looking troubled. “No, I have not visited our friend Will. I was unsure if it would be wise, given his delusions about me. But I imagine I shall have to go before this dreadful thing is over, at the very least to say goodbye. If he will have me, that is.”

“Oh, Will is _very_ interested in speaking to you,” Jack said, with a grim chuckle. “I think he’s been waiting to see you for a long time.”  
Hannibal was silent for a moment, staring out of the rain-dotted windshield at the bleak stones and fences of the prison. If Jack had not been so preoccupied, he might have noticed the fleeting smile that crossed the other man’s face – a glimpse of sharp teeth and feral eyes. 

“I think you may be right,” he said, with a weary sigh. The veil had settled comfortably back into place. “But we’ll worry about that later. Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer me to drive?”

“No, I’m honestly fine, thank you.” 

The car pulled smoothly out of the parking lot and turned back onto the highway. Hannibal watched the prison recede in the rear-view mirror, the weak sunlight glinting off the razor-wire and making his eyes flash. Jack was talking but he wasn’t listening. He was deep in the vast spaces of his memory palace, retrieving the information he would need. 

There were things to be done. He had not yet decided how he would allow this thing to end, and the options thrilled him like the promise of an untouched chessboard. The pieces had fallen into place quite beautifully, all the pawns lined up for the slaughter. Which way to send them.

He would have to see Will before he made up his mind, he thought with a satisfied hum.

Or perhaps he would simply flip a coin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Virginia allows its condemned inmates a choice between the electric chair and lethal injection as means of execution. Will's nightmare in 'Hassun' (which inspired this fic) involved the use of the electric chair and I am going with that as I find it more visually horrific.


	3. Chapter 3

 

 He lay on his back, his hands resting limp on his stomach, bloodied fingers curled towards bruised and scraped palms. His mouth was slack and dry. Damp eyes stared unseeing at the sliver of light that found its way under the door to invade the punishing dark.

He had only stopped screaming when his throat gave out. He had only stopped pounding on the door when his hands were too sore and wet with blood and his body too tired to continue. Then he had simply lain down and cried until his eyes had nothing left to give. He was empty.

In the rational part of his mind that had survived the years of maddening solitude, he knew this reaction was senseless. Childish, even. His outburst in the visitation room had only served to push Jack away and land him in the punishment cell, where there was no light and only the echoing of one’s own screams for distraction. He had spent so many long, long nights in this awful room when he first arrived, still reeling from the shock of the verdict and fighting his captors at every turn; he had grown to despise this cell, to fear it. What good would throwing a fit do but extend his time in here, and hurt himself? He hadn’t been thinking straight.

But of course he hadn’t. What was there to think about, really? Only that he was in here in Hannibal Lecter’s place – he was in here and would only leave when they zipped him up in a fucking body bag… He shuddered, fresh tears leaking from the corners of raw swollen eyes. No. Screaming felt like a perfectly rational thing to do, given the circumstances.

His tongue sought to wet cracked lips. His eyes slipped closed, breath catching as he shut out the last splinter of merciful light. He tried to remember how long he had been in here since Jack left… An hour? It could have been. It could just have easily been a day. The longest he had spent in here had been a week, and by the time they had let him out and back to his regular cell he had been meek as a penitent child, almost weeping with relief when he was able to look upon the light once more. Surely they would not keep him in here that long now, not this close to… This close to the end.

“Dad…”

His face twitched, eyes moving beneath closed lids. He was looking for the stream, but he had lost his way somehow; his feet moved silently across unfamiliar ground, the comforting rush and hum of water replaced with a thick silence thrumming with the beat of his heart. Her voice drifted through it, but he couldn’t find her.

Something was wrong.

“Dad. I’m here.”

He felt the mattress dip as a weight settled on it at his side. He did not dare open his eyes.

“You’re not alone. I’m here with you.”

The lightest touch of fingers against his face and Will’s eyes flew open, lips parting to scream, but only a rasping whimper escaped him as he scrambled up the mattress to press his back into a corner, panting.

“ _Dad…_ ”

Nothing there. Only the darkness, and the ghost of her scent lingering in the air. Or perhaps only in his mind.

*

“This is a violation of my client’s rights - open this cell up right now or you’ll have a lawsuit on yours hands by the end of the week.”

Brauer’s voice cut through the haze in Will’s mind. He had heard footsteps down the hall, raised voices, the clanging of automated locks… But they could just have easily come from inside his own mind. There was no mistaking now, though, the voice of his attorney from right outside the door, the clipped and authoritative tone of a clever man who wished he was on the golf course right now instead of dealing with his favourite surly and uncooperative client, not to mention the barrel of laughs that was the state of Will’s appeals.

“It’s not violating nobody’s rights – he was violent, he was restrained, and he was put in here to cool down.”

“Just open it,” Brauer repeated, sounding almost bored.

A moment of silence, then a clatter of keys and the door swung open. Will groaned and shielded his eyes against the light. He heard a woman gasp.

“Will…”

Blinking and shivering, he lowered the arm covering his face. Two guards flanked the door, peering in at him with hands perched over the canisters of pepper spray clipped to their belts. Between them was Brauer, his suit jacket slung over one arm and his tie loosened. At his side –

“Alana,” Will mumbled. He coughed and wiped his mouth, squinting out at her as his eyes adjusted. She was dressed in a simple black wrap dress and black boots, so far removed from the bright colours and patterns she had once favoured. It was obvious at once that she had been crying.

Alana Bloom looked down at Will – _her_ Will, a man she had talked to and laughed with, a man who’s home she had visited and dogs she had played with, a man whom she had loved a little, once, maybe, even knowing he was broken in a way she could never hope to be fixed… She looked down at Will, unshaven and lank-haired, huddled on the concrete floor of a six-by-eight foot box shielding his eyes with fingers crusted with his own blood and, not for the first time in her life or even since this ordeal began, she felt her heart break.

“How long has he been in here?” she demanded at the closest guard, glad for the excuse to look away from the pitiful man on the floor.

The guard glanced at his watch. “About eight hours, I think. They put him in here before my shift started.”

“Has the light in there been out that whole time?”

“Yes ma’am, he’s being punished.”

“Turn the light on.”

“I told you, he’s being-”

“Turn the light on right now!” Alana demanded, her voice high and thin and ugly to her own ears.

The guards looked at one another, and then at the lawyer, who cocked an eyebrow and nodded once, before doing as she said. The single lightbulb in the cell flickered to life, and Will pressed both palms against his eyes with a guttural moan.

“Look at him, he’s bloody,” Brauer said. “You didn’t think you should do something about that?”

“I didn’t know he was bloody. He must’ve busted his hands up banging on the door. It’s his own fault.”

“He had just been delivered some traumatic news – he could have been having a psychotic break.”

“Look, I didn’t know-”

“I need to speak to my client in private, and Dr Bloom will be joining me to assess his mental state. After we’re through I strongly advise that you return him to his normal cell unless you want your name mentioned in a lawsuit about prisoner mistreatment.”

“He’s being punished…”

“In four weeks’ time, he’s going to be put to death,” Brauer snapped. Alana pressed a knuckle to her lips and turned her face away. “Don’t you think he’s being punished enough?”

Another silence. Will lowered his hands from his eyes and wiped at his dry lips again.

The guard who had spoken sighed. “He can go back to his cell today, but if he has another violent episode, I’m sorry, but he’ll be spending every waking moment in here between now and his last meal. The warden will agree.”

“And I’ll speak to the warden directly if that happens – right now I want to speak to my client in the counsellors’ room, please and thank you.”

“Has he been fed?” Alana said.

The guard nodded to a plastic tray of food that lay, untouched and congealing, on the floor beside Will’s feet. “He wouldn’t eat it.”

“Can you bring him something fresh?”

“Lady, he’s a death row inmate and I’m not his damn butler. He’ll be fed at his next mealtime, just like everybody else on his block. Now get on your feet inmate – and if you so much as look at me the wrong way before I’m done restraining you, I’ll mace you in the face, got it?”

Alana turned her back on the men as Will climbed unsteadily to his feet and the cumbersome process of restraining him began. The pain and shock that had consumed her when she first heard the news and left her weeping uncontrollably in her office had mounted to a sick dread that settled, heavy as a stone, in the pit of her stomach as soon as she entered the prison; she felt with unwavering certainty that she would vomit before the day was through, and only hoped she didn’t do it in front of Will. She could not even imagine where his head was at right now; she had to be strong for him. Still, her hands were shaking as one of the guards gave Will a rough nudge in the back to get him moving, the other leading the way.

Their party was silent until they reached the counsellors’ visitation room, a small grey box with bars on the window and a view of the carpark. Brauer put his briefcase down on the metal table and hung his jacket over the back of a chair as Will was shuffled inside. His cuffed wrists were secured at his waist to a wide leather belt, a length of chain shaking down between his legs to connect the cuffs at his ankles. Every small, difficult movement was accompanied by a rattle and clink.

“Can you please remove his restraints?” Alana asked quietly. She couldn’t stand to see Will in them, like some… The word _criminal_ still eluded her, even after all this time. Even knowing what he’d done.

“Can’t do it, sorry ma’am. Only time he’s allowed out of them is in the yard, in the shower, or in his cell.”

“He wouldn’t hurt us.” Even as she said the words, she wondered if that was true. There had been a time when Alana hadn’t thought Will capable of hurting anyone, not really. But she’d sat through that awful ordeal of a trial – she’d heard the evidence, and… and seen what he’d done.

“I’m sorry but it’s out of the question.” The guard turned to Brauer. “I’ll be right outside the door and we’ll be watching you on the monitor. Just knock when you’re done, counsellor. You’ve got an hour.”

“Thank you.”

The door had barely closed when Alana crossed the room in three quick strides and pulled Will into a tight, awkward embrace. With his hands cuffed in front, he couldn’t help but knock her stomach, but she didn’t care. She pressed her face into his shoulder and tried not to sob. “I’m so sorry, Will.”

“I know,” Will murmured, allowing himself to nuzzle his cheek against her neck for a brief moment before pulling away. She smelt wonderful – sweet and clean and alive. He wished he could hold onto that somehow when the smells of the prison – sweat, bland chilli on the meal cart down the hall, Clorox in the drains – settled over him again like smog.

He sat down with a heavy rattle of chains and flexed his aching fingers, his eyes wandering to the window with its paltry view. The two hours a week he spent in the tiny exercise yard were the happiest he ever had here. When the unchanging march of empty days spent in his cell got the better of him, he would dream of having a view of his own – a window where he could see a tree, or even water. He would have sold his soul for it.

It occurred to him that the view of the prison laundry and the administrative building beyond that which he could see from the yard would be the last thing he would ever see of the world that existed outside these walls, and all at once his cheeks were streaked with fresh tears.

“Will…” Alana trailed off. There was nothing she could say that would make this better.

Brauer cleared his throat. He no longer looked bored – billable hours were billable hours after all – but an abundance of sympathy was not evident in his facial expressions either. Will remembered Brauer calling his defence case during the trial a form of advertising. He supposed that made him a product, and a faulty one at that. Brauer was a businessman; he was more than ready to have this particular product taken off shelves so he could move on to the next.

 _He’s only got to wait a month_ , Will thought. _Then he can be through with me._

“I know that Jack Crawford came by this morning to break you the bad news, so I’ll just cut right to the chase,” Brauer said, tapping his pen against his legal pad. “A date’s been set but there’s still plenty we can do to at least stall it if not take it off the table completely.”

Will nodded, staring at the table. “What you lawyers call last-ditch appeals… Doesn’t inspire much confidence.”

“There’s still a few appeals left to file with the Court of Appeals before they're exhausted. I'm not going to bullshit you - there's a good chance they'll be rejected, and when they are, we'll immediately be ready to file for a writ of certiorari in the Supreme Court. What that means is we're requesting they hear the appeal, which they're not obligated to. If cert is granted, the execution has to be delayed while the merits of the petition are considered. That buys us time."

"And if they reject us?" Alana asked.

"There's no other place to appeal if cert is denied," Brauer said, shrugging. "The appeal would be dead."

"And so would I," Will said, quietly. Brauer neither confirmed nor denied this, but both knew it was in all likelihood true. Brauer had handled enough capital murder cases to appreciate how difficult it was to stop the ball rolling once it had gained this much momentum.

"There must be something else we can do," Alana said. It was taking all the self-restraint she had to keep the desperation from her voice, to keep her tone neutral and constructive when she wanted to scream.

"We'll be knocking on every door available to us, and we'll be loud, don't you worry," Brauer said. "We'll appeal to the Board of Pardons - they can recommend clemency to the Governor. Your case is high-profile, and if the execution goes ahead, it could cause embarrassment for the Governor further down the line so there's a chance that he'll at least give us a stay even if he won't grant clemency. It doesn't sound like much, but our best hope right now is to get a stay and allow your case to be buried in the courts again for a few years while the dust settles. That'll give us time to regroup and attack this thing from a different angle. In the meantime, I've got a meeting with the bishop of the diocese next week - I know you're not a religious man, Mr Graham, but he's appealed directly to the Governor on behalf of condemned inmates in the past and it carries some weight. Amnesty International have got a petition on the go for you - they're arguing your previous work in law enforcement unduly influenced jurors. And I spoke to the director of the VADP on the drive over - they're already planning a protest next week and a vigil outside the prison on the night. What I'm saying is, a lot can happen in a month, Will," he finished, shrugging again. "It's not a good position to be in by any stretch of the imagination, but there's no reason to lay down and stop kicking just yet."

Will raised his eyes to meet his lawyers. He looked so tired, Alana thought. Tired and scared, though he tried not to show it. Not for the first time, she wondered how the jury had seen a monster lurking behind those wide, frightened blue eyes.

 _If I have to watch him die, I think I’ll lose my mind,_ she thought, then quickly dismissed it. Her nails were digging into her palms tight enough to draw small crescents of blood.

“Can you be straight with me?” Will said. “What are my chances at this point?”

Brauer, to his credit, managed to hold Will’s gaze. “It’s hard to say for sure. You know Virginia isn’t shy about executions, and the governor’s got a point he wants to prove, regardless of what his advisers say. But I’m very good at what I do, and the FBI wants to avoid the embarrassment of a highly publicised execution of one of its own consultants at all costs. So… maybe odds of sixty-forty against you, at least as far a postponement is concerned. Clemency is a whole different kettle of fish of course.”

Will thought about this, then nodded. “Thank you for being honest.”

Brauer gave a small nod in acknowledgement and jotted something on his pad. “Do you have any questions about what’s going to happen over the next four weeks?”

Will wet his lips, his eyes drifting back toward the window. The drying tears on his cheeks caught the weak sunlight and glistened like frost on winter leaves. Alana was struck by the horrible image of Will’s body dead and cold on a mortuary slab, his head shaven and singed, and beads of ice beginning to crust his lips and eyelashes. She was grateful when he moved his head, scattering the image from her mind.

“Probably nothing you can answer,” Will murmured. “How I’ll be able to sleep. What nightmares I’m going to have when I do. How it’ll feel when I sit in the chair and they tighten the belts…”

His breath hitched in his throat on the final words. He swallowed, lips pressed together in a tight line.

Alana reached across the table as if to grab his hand, remembered too late that he couldn’t reach back, and drew it into her lap once more. “The worst thing you can do is dwell on it, Will,” she said. “It’ll drive you mad.”

“How in the hell can I _not_ dwell on it, Alana?” Will muttered, languidly dragging his eyes from the window to look at her. “There isn’t much in the way of distraction in here. I’ve got…” He suddenly laughed, a harsh bark that was so unlike him that Alana recoiled, startled. “I was going to say I’ve got all the time in the world to dwell, but we all know that’s not true.”

“It’s too early to give up. A month is a long time…”

“Say that when you’ve got a month left.”

She had no response to that.

Brauer glanced at his watch and flipped through his notes, seeming unperturbed by the two fragile people in the room with him who were both on the verge of tears. Will supposed he was very used to it by now.

 _How many clients has he watched die?_ Will thought. _Does he lose sleep over them anymore?_

“Who’ll be there?”

Brauer looked up. “Excuse me?”

“At the… the thing. Who’ll be there when it happens?”

Brauer hesitated, as if deciding whether or not Will really wanted to know, or if it would only trigger another meltdown. “The viewing party’s usually pretty small at these things,” he said slowly. “I’ll be there, and I imagine the district attorney will want to watch. The victims’ families will be invited…”

Will closed his eyes, his cheeks very pale. “Do I get anyone? I don’t have any family around anymore… At least nobody that I want to watch me die.”

“It’s usually only family, but there are extenuating circumstances in this case. I know Jack Crawford wishes to be there, and he has sway with the district attorney. If there’s any close friends you want to be there for you, Will, I might be able to work something out with the warden.”

Alana bowed her head, her hair tumbling over her face. She didn’t want Will to see that she had started crying. She knew that if he asked her, she would make herself go; she would not leave him alone in his final moments. But it would haunt her for the rest of her life.

Will nodded and wet his lips. _There’s one person I want… And he won’t be able to stay away._ “Is that it?”

Brauer tapped his pen on the knuckles of his other hand. “Other than prison staff and a doctor in the room with you, there’ll be a few members of the press invited to witness. They’ll do a lottery to pick which ones. No cameras obviously. The rest will wait outside the gates for the news.”

“That’s what I thought.” Will nodded again, looking thoughtful, as though he had confirmed something to himself. He lapsed into silence.

Another glance at the watch from Brauer. “We’ve got about ten minutes left. I’ll be back later in the week, and I’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything about the appeals. Is there anything else you want to discuss before I go?”

Will began to shake his head, then looked at Alana. His posture had been slumped and defeated since he sat down; now he sat up straighter and leaned forward.

“Alana. I need you to promise me that you’ll be careful. Around _him_.”

Alana’s hand brushed through her hair, agitated. “Will, I don’t want to hear this.”

Will laughed – he couldn’t help himself, although he knew it made him sound crazy. Nobody wanted to hear the truth – not Jack, not Alana; not even his own damn lawyer, not really. He had told them over and over again, but they had put their fingers in their ears. And when he was gone and the truth finally came out (for the real Ripper would not wait long to gloat) he knew what people would say.

_There was no way we could have known._

“No matter what you think about me, I need you to trust me on this. He’s dangerous.”

“Will…”

“Stay away from Hannibal Lecter,” Will said, cold fury burning behind the urgency of his words. "You have no idea what he's capable of."

"You're delusional," Alana snapped. "Hannibal is a good man. He's tried to help you - he's still trying."

Will was silent for a moment, his eyes boring into hers. "Are you... Are you _fucking him,_ Alana?"

Alana stood up sharply and moved away from the table, her back to Will. The blood had drained from her face. She rapped her knuckles on the door.

“We’re through here,” she told the guards when they came. “Please take this man back to his cell.”

There was no hug before she left this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay in getting the chapters out. Will is continuing to have a very bad day, but I have some surprises planned for the next few chapters, so stay tuned...
> 
> My knowledge of the appeals process for capital murder cases in the US is patchy at best so I've probably made mistakes.  
> The reference to the VADP refers to the group Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty - you can find out more about what they do at www.vadp.org  
> Amnesty International of course do great work in the field of death penalty abolition, and I've had the privilege of marching with them and attending vigils in the past.  
> Virginia has historically been one of the most aggressive states for carrying out executions, but that is currently in decline. For the purposes of this story, however, that will not be the case.


	4. Chapter 4

He was fed three times a day. Breakfast came at the baffling hour of four-thirty in the morning, which was fine really because he had trouble sleeping anyway. And it could always be worse: in Texas, he knew, it was served at three. 

Lunch came at eleven, and dinner at seven. The food was usually cold and often mouldy or stale. The state had decided that each inmate was entitled to at least twenty-two hundred calories a day, but most of this seemed to come in the form of an endless supply of potatoes prepared in a dozen equally revolting and almost inedible ways. If not potatoes, then it was slices of plain white bread stacked on the side. 

Will hated the food here. In his past life he’d always eaten lightly and simply, and had never minded skipping meals when he was preoccupied at work; but with so little to do on death row but sleep and look forward to the next meal, the disgusting diet was enough to make even someone experienced in fasting miserable. Sometimes at night he dreamt of cooking a freshly caught fish over the campfire, pulling its succulent pale flesh away from the bone with his fingers and raising them, dripping with juices, to his lips… He would try to call that imagine to mind this as he swallowed down whatever mulch of starchy vegetables and overcooked mystery meat they’d given him, but he never could. It was getting harder and harder to live in his head, with the nightmares starting to follow him out into the light.

He had not eaten lunch – a limp baloney sandwich with an extra helping of plain bread – when it was dropped on the floor of the punishment cell after his little outburst. He had proceeded to miss dinner during his meeting with his counsellor. When he realised this, he asked the guards who’d escorted him back to his cell if he could have something to eat. They told him no. He commented mildly that this was prisoner mistreatment as they removed his handcuffs, and was told to write to his congressman.

He hadn’t finished his morning toast before Jack’s visit. It was hard and difficult to swallow, but he ate it anyway, chewing slowly to make it last. It did nothing to make him feel any better. With a sigh, Will lowered himself to the grimy floor and did sit-ups until the hunger pains went away. He’d last until morning.

The thought of choosing his last meal suddenly occurred to him, and he froze mid sit-up. He sat down on his bunk and put his face in his hands. 

Since he’d arrived on death row, eleven other men had been executed. The first, two months into his imprisonment, had shaken Will to his core; he’d just about come to terms with where he was and what was happening to him by then, but that had driven the point home in a way he’d never recovered from. He never spoke with his fellow inmates – it was called solitary confinement for a reason – but the atmosphere on death row always changed on the night of an execution. They’d hear the guards murmuring about it for days in advance, so they’d always know. Deathly quiet consumed the place. Someone would cry, trying not to be heard. No one slept.

Clinically, Will knew what to expect in these final weeks. He’d worked in law enforcement. He knew what happened to those condemned to this fate. 

Fifteen days prior to the execution, he would be given a cardboard box in which he could pack the few paltry possessions he owned, then he would be taken from his cell in shackles and driven approximately thirty miles to the Greensville Correctional Center, where the death chamber was located. While he was there, the men who would put him to death would rehearse the procedure regularly in the white tiled room at the end of the hall. On his last day, they would place him under twenty-four hour ‘death watch’, ensuring that he didn’t kill himself before the state got the chance. They’d ask him what he wanted for his last meal, and he’d be granted one final visitation. Then they’d take him to the chamber.

Behind closed eyes, Will saw himself strapped rigid to the chair, his pulse racing in his throat, nails digging into the wood. And there was Dr Lecter, standing beside Jack in a tailored black suit, watching comfortably from behind a curtained window, examining his handiwork, orchestrating the sublime destruction of another life. Smiling. 

The dry toast in his stomach suddenly came back up; Will made it to the toilet and vomited until nothing but sour bile was left. The image lingered in his mind like the black spots of vision left behind on the eye after staring too long at the sun. He rubbed his wrists, agitated; he could almost feel the tight leather belts cutting into his skin. He knew what it meant to have nightmares so vivid that they were almost indistinguishable from waking life; he had been in that dark place before and it had led him here. But he had not been prepared for the day the nightmares became harbingers of his coming fate. 

Shivering, he splashed his cheeks with cold water and stared at his thin, pallid face in the small mirror, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. He pushed his fingers through his thick, tangled curls. They were getting long. They’d all be gone in a month. 

The thought that he’d be dead a month from that day was almost incomprehensible. Incomprehensible, and probably true.

But there was something he had to do before then. As much as he wanted to curl up and scream, there was work to be done. Lights out was in just a couple of hours, and he had letters to write before then. He had plenty of paper. 

Hannibal might have done this to him, and he might believe he had gotten away with it but, sooner or later, the truth was going to come out. Will had to believe that; it was the only thing keeping him sane. And when it did, he wanted the truth – his truth – on record. Even if he wasn’t around to tell it anymore. Everyone would know how wrong they had been about Hannibal Lecter. About him. 

Sitting at his metal desk, Will started writing the first of three very important letters. 

 

*

 

“Do you believe Will Graham is sane?”

Alana hesitated before answering, reaching for her beer. She took a long drink and mulled the question over for a while, her brow creased, finger idly tracing patterns in the condensation on the glass. Hannibal did not push her, merely watched her from the corner of his eye as he sliced the tomatoes. She liked his patience. She liked an awful lot of things about him. 

They’d been sleeping together for about six months. It had not been something that either planned, but it seemed to be working out for them. She’d shown up on his doorstep one night with a bottle of wine after a particularly draining visitation with Will, and he’d cooked for her. One thing led to another, as they so often did. It had been some time since she’d taken a male lover, but Hannibal was as conscientious in bed as he was in every other aspect of his life, and she found herself quite satisfied. Little changed between them. Both understood what the other wanted, and didn’t ask for more. They saw one another a few times a week, but always on a night after Alana had visited the prison. She needed to work Will out from under her skin. 

“It’s difficult to say,” she said, aware she was avoiding giving a real answer. “Was Will ever really sane?”

“The courts believed so.”

“And I’m sure they’ll continue believing that, regardless of what I or any other expert his lawyer ropes in will testify to. Do I think the solitary confinement has damaged his mental health? Yes, absolutely. You haven’t _seen_ him, Hannibal. He’s deteriorated, physically and mentally. But his lawyer is filing a petition arguing that he has been driven completely out of his mind – that he has no real concept of what is happening to him anymore. Do I think that’s true? Absolutely not. Will knows exactly what is happening, and that’s the problem. He’s too sane for his own good. That petition is dead in the water; they’ll find him legally sane to execute, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it!”

Hannibal concealed a smile as she spoke. It fascinated him to hear Alana discuss Will, to see him through her eyes, without having had the pleasure of the man’s company in three long years. The anticipation of seeing the man in person soon enough, seeing his work sitting in front of him, was tantalising. 

“You’ve done all that you can do for him and more,” he said, laying down his knife and wiping his hands on a towel. “Will understands that. You cannot work miracles, Alana.”

“I keep thinking about the trial,” she said, taking another sip of her beer to calm herself. She adored the beer that Hannibal made just for her, its rich flavour somehow both familiar and strange. “I lie awake some nights playing my own testimony over in my head, doubting myself, thinking maybe if I’d said something differently, this wouldn’t have happened to him…”

She broke off, trying not to cry. She believed in the therapeutic value of crying, but she did so far too often these days. Hannibal watched her for a moment, before crossing the kitchen and putting his arms around her. Strong as she was – and Alana was very strong indeed – she did not hesitate to melt into his embrace. 

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, snuffling against his crisp white shirt. “It’s been a difficult day. You should have seen him, Hannibal. The look in his eyes…”

“You have nothing to be sorry about, Alana,” Hannibal said, stroking the back of her head. “I am the one who ought to be sorry. I have abandoned my duties as a friend of Will Graham, and you have been forced to shoulder the weight of my negligence.” 

She shook her head against his chest. “It wouldn’t have been wise for you to see him. He’s still harbouring dangerous delusions about you. It frustrates the hell out of his lawyer – he’s trying to construct a coherent defence for Will, and Will’s not listening to him and still screaming about you every time he gets the chance. I think he’s latched onto these delusions about you as a way to make sense of what he did and what’s happening to him, and maybe he even truly believes them now. The mere mention of you, or of the things he did, can set him off. I don’t know what he’d do if he saw you.”

She felt Hannibal sigh. “Perhaps you are right. But still I feel a great weight of responsibility for what became of Will. I failed to see the signs of his sickness until it was too late. Perhaps, if I’d been a better friend to him… Perhaps things would have turned out differently.”

Alana drew back and sought out a kiss. He could taste the lingering traces of beer on her lips, and hummed softly at the thought of whom he’d put in it. In the back of his mind, he was working through his plans for the coming weeks; there was work to be done, and decisions to be made. Alana’s eyes were closed. He thought about what he would do the judge who’d presided over Will’s trial. He would have to feed part of the man to her. It was only fitting, after what she’d been put through.

“We all missed it, whatever it was,” Alana murmured as they broke apart. “Now Will’s paying the price.”

A silence settled between them. Alana reached for her beer again and drained the glass. Hannibal moved to pour her another, and sipped his own wine. The preparations for dinner were forgotten for the time.

“I will have to see him,” Hannibal said. “Before the end. If he will allow me to visit, then I shall.”

Alana nodded, her eyes downcast. “It might never happen. His lawyer is fighting for a stay. It’s probably the best case scenario at the point. No one really believes they’ll grant him clemency. Not when he was offered a plea bargain before trial and turned it down. And he doesn’t _want_ his sentence commuted, Hannibal. I know Will. He’d rather die in the electric chair than spend the rest of his life surrounded by murderers in a maximum security prison. He doesn’t want a stay either, not really. He just wants to be found innocent, and you and I both know that isn’t going to happen.”

“Do you believe a stay of execution is likely?”

She bit her lip. Her silence was answer enough. 

“I’m almost glad,” she said, finally. “God, I know this is a terrible thing to admit. But I can’t stand to live in this stasis anymore. If they grant a thirty day stay, sooner or later we’ll be right back to this moment, and no one will be better off for it. It won’t end until he’s dead. We’ll never be to move on. It’s awful to say, I know, but it’s the truth. I’m almost glad it’s over.” 

“Will Graham is and will always be our friend,” Hannibal said, slowly. “Friendship requires one to think about what is best for the other, even if they are unable or unwilling to see it themselves. If there is a possibility that Will may be telling the truth about his innocence, then we must continue to fight for him. But if he is guilty… Perhaps you are right. A swift end to this ordeal may be desirable, when the alternative is prolonged suffering.”

“The question is, then, do you think there’s a possibility that he’s innocent?” Alana said, her hands trembling as she picked up her glass. 

Hannibal wrung his hands together, his brow furrowed. His performance was impeccable. It amused him to know how completely he had deceived her. 

“No,” he said, with a pained exhale. Beautiful. It was theatre. His lines could have been crafted by Ibsen. “I saw the ear in his sink with my own eyes. I saw evidence of his handiwork in everything the court displayed; it ran through those gruesome crimes like a thread through pearls. He confessed to me his obsession with Abigail Hobbs, and that he had gotten so deep inside her father’s head that he felt he was becoming him. As hard as I try to doubt my own senses, I cannot deny the truth that presents itself to me, terrible though it may be.”

“He didn’t know what he was doing,” Alana said, wondering, not for the first time, if there was any truth in those words at all. “I have to believe that, Hannibal. The alternative is too horrifying to consider.”

“Regardless, we will stand by his side until the bitter end,” Hannibal said. “We owe Will that much.”

“Will you watch? If he asks you to. Will you watch it happen?”

Hannibal appeared to consider the question for a moment, his lips slightly parted in distress. In truth, he had envisioned that moment many times already. “Yes. I would not deny him in his hour of need.”

Alana nodded, bowing her head. Her dark hair fell over her eyes. Hannibal bit back a smile. 

“I don’t feel like dinner anymore, Hannibal,” she said, putting a hand on his chest. “I’m sorry, I’ve lost my appetite.”

“That is quite understandable, given the circumstances. What would you have us do instead?”

“What I want is just to forget about this madness for a little while… Would that be alright? Is it selfish?”

He brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, and she tilted her face up to accept a lingering kiss. “If it is selfish, then let us both be selfish,” he said, his voice honey-sweet and soothing.

They retired to the bedroom and made love for a long time, Alana’s face pale and serene in the lamplight as he made her forget. She cried afterward, and he held her. When she was asleep, he finally allowed himself to smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to the lovely people who have been leaving comments with each chapter update. I wasn't sure if there would be any interest in a story of this nature, so I appreciate you taking the time to leave encouraging comments :)


	5. Chapter 5

Freddie Lounds was no stranger to visiting maximum security prisons in pursuit of a juicy story. It came with the territory of crime journalism; her readers loved the grislier details, and where better to get them than from the mouth of a murderer himself. Will Graham wasn’t even the first criminal she’d interviewed from death row, though, she knew, he would be the one to make her career.

She made the drive down to Waverly, Virginia the evening prior to the visitation, and checked into a motel near the prison for the night. After a quick dinner of takeout noodles, she poured herself a glass of wine and typed up the first draft of her introduction to what would be a whole new chapter of the book. She wanted to get some thoughts on paper before she saw him. 

_I was less surprised than one might imagine to receive the letter from Will Graham, inviting me to conduct a series of exclusive interviews with him in the weeks leading up to his execution for the murders of five people, including my dear friend Abigail Hobbs._

_Graham and I had never exactly seen eye-to-eye before his incarceration, particularly with regards to Abigail’s decision to tell her story to me in her own words – I understand now that Will Graham was dangerously obsessed with Abigail, and saw my relationship with the girl as a threat. Abigail was becoming frightened of him, and rightfully so. After I testified against him during his trial, he routinely ignored all communication I sent him in prison requesting interviews._

_However, within five days of receiving the news that a date had been set for his execution, I found myself driving to the Sussex State Prison where Mr Graham had been incarcerated on death row for almost three years, steeling myself to once again sit opposite the man who had butchered Abigail Hobbs and swallowed her ear, and potentially more of her. Graham had always struck me as a particularly cold monster, hiding within the ranks of the FBI and even revisiting his own crime scenes under the guise of being a special investigator. Yet he had never publicly admitted his guilt, concocting all manner of wild theories in a cowardly attempt to save his own skin, even going so far as to point the finger of blame at his psychiatrist, Dr Hannibal Lecter. (These claims, it should be noted, were fully investigated by the FBI; no evidence was found to substantiate them). Despite his track record for lying, the ticking clock of an impending death sentence is often enough to make even the most tight-lipped of criminals confess, and I knew then that I might be the first person to hear Will Graham admit to what he had done._

_More importantly, I might find out what he did with the rest of Abigail._

Satisfied, Freddie sat back and drained her wine glass. In his letter, Will Graham had not specified his reason for breaking his silence towards the press, simply promising her an exclusive story if she came. She was not certain that he would confess, but the introduction could easily be amended if he didn’t. Regardless, this exclusive would skyrocket book sales. 

She could see it now. The book would open with a teaser of this interview, describing what it was like to see this monster where he belonged, get the reader hooked. Then she would jump back to Abigail Hobbs, to Graham’s participation in the investigation of her father’s crimes, and to the interview material she’d collected from the girl before she disappeared. She would lay it on thick when she described her affection for the girl, her horror when she discovered what had become of her. A nice gruesome account of Graham’s murders would comprise the book’s middle portion, with plenty of pictures of course, and then a summary of the trial (there was a great courtroom sketch of Freddie on the witness stand that she was dying to include, looking grave yet glamorous in her striking blue suit). The final part would be the interviews with Graham himself, culminating in the execution. She only wished she could be there. Pity. 

Still, she had two exclusive sets of interviews, one with the victim, cut tragically short with the girl’s disappearance, and one with the man who killed her. She didn’t think it had been done before. There would be other books about Will Graham, but hers would be the first and the best. She already had publishers interested. Will Graham was going to make her rich. 

She dreamed of fame and fortune, and woke bright and early to prepare and make the thirty-minute drive from the motel to the prison. The morning was crisp and cold, the first flakes of snow beginning to fall. Winter was on its way. Freddie hurried into the building and signed in, showing her identification, handing her purse over to be checked, turning in her cell phone. She’d been careful not to wear an underwired bra in case it set the metal detector off. This was not her first rodeo. A guard led her through to the visitation room, grumbling about how uncooperative Graham was and warning her about his mood swings. With a flirtatious smile, she told him she could handle herself. The guard seemed charmed by her. He told her they were fetching Graham from his cell, and left her alone.

Freddie fluffed her hair and reapplied her lipstick. She knew she looked good. With the exception of Alana Bloom, she doubted Graham had even seen a woman in three years. If a little sex appeal loosened his tongue, she was willing to give it. 

The door on the other side of the glass opened, and Will Graham was escorted inside. Freddie’s expression remained neutral, though the satisfaction she felt was profound. She made a mental note of how he looked, how he walked, how he held himself. His handcuffs were removed and Will took a seat. Both reached for their telephones.

“Hello Freddie. Thank you for coming.”

His voice sounded rusty. She imagined he didn’t have much cause to use it these days.

“The pleasure is all mine, Mr Graham.”

Will chuckled and ran a hand through his hair. He’d cleaned himself up as best he could, showering that morning, shaving, taming his unruly curls. “I think you can call me Will, given my social status.”

“Alright Will. It’s good to see you. Let me rephrase that: it’s good to see you _in here_. That outfit suits you.”

Will grinned. His face looked haggard compared to the man she’d last seen in court. He was incredibly pale. “Always the charmer, aren’t you?”

“You invited me here for a reason, and I doubt that reason was to share pleasantries for an hour. You need me for something.”

Will scratched his chin and nodded. “You’re right, I do. I think we can help each other.”

“Why do you suppose that I’d want to help a convicted murderer only weeks before his execution?”

“Oh, come on Freddie, we both know the answer to that. You’ll help me because I can give you what you love the most. Advancement.”

Freddie stared at him coolly. Will raised an eyebrow. 

“Twenty-five days from now, I will be put to death,” he said. “I have spoken to no other reporter before, and I give you my word that I will speak only to you if you’ll listen to what I have to say. You will be the first and last word in the mind of Will Graham. God, you could dine out on that for years.”

Freddie wet her lips. “I’m listening. What is it that you want me to do for you in return?”

“Just that. Listen. I want to tell my story. I want you to publish my story, exactly as I tell it.”

“Are you going to confess?”

Will’s lips twitched into a weary half-smile. “No. I have nothing to confess to.”

Freddie shrugged. “I’m not sure that I want to sit here and listen to a murderer spin me a fairy tale. I’m not sure that my readers would want to hear that, either.”

“Oh, but they would. Because here’s the exciting part. I didn’t kill those people, Freddie. The real killer is still out there, and sooner or later, he’s going to make sure that _everybody_ knows it. If I’m lucky, he’ll do it before they strap me to the chair and send three thousand volts of electricity coursing through my body. But luck hasn’t been on my side recently, has it?”

He leant forward, resting his elbows on the counter between them. His words were thoughtful and calm, but Freddie had interviewed enough crazy men to see the madness brimming behind his intelligent, unhappy eyes. 

“This is a win for you either way, really,” he said. “If I die and they never acquit me, you’ll still have an exclusive interview with a murderer, and a deranged one at that. I’m not asking you to endorse what I say or even believe it. You just have to be the messenger. Hell, Freddie, I don’t even care if you want to pass judgement on my story and call it a crock of shit. But if the truth does come out and I’m eventually exonerated, you will have the definitive account of an innocent man’s wrongful execution. That’s not just going to appeal to the morbid true-crime readers that would buy your book – that will make headlines around the world. Talk show appearances, news articles. You would have the satisfaction of seeing the straight press – the sanctified Washington Post and even the holy New York Times – run your copyrighted material under your byline, with your picture credits. Think of the publicity.”

Freddie did not need to be told; in the back of her mind, she was already preparing the speech she would give at the press conference, dressed in a fine black suit to mourn her dear friend Will Graham (perhaps the Vivienne Westwood she’d had her eye on; money would not be an issue with a book sitting at the top of every bestsellers list in the country), cameras flashing, a shiny hardback copy of the book clutched in her manicured hands as she denounced the flawed system that had sent an innocent man to his grave. The activists would love her. And the correspondents of those august journals who had looked down on her because she had taken a different faith would hate her even more, but it would be the hatred of jealousy and grudging respect, the hatred that was good for business. She would be a hero. There might even be a movie deal if she played her cards right. 

Will was watching her intently. Freddie tucked the fantasy away to dwell on later, and composed herself. There was a very good chance, of course, that Will was talking out of his ass. Intelligent psychopaths were perfectly capable of faking sincerity to get what they wanted. If he thought for one second she was going to fight on his behalf to get his execution delayed on the basis of some cock and bull story he’d spent three years constructing, he was sorely mistaken. Bu he was right about one thing. This was a win-win for her. 

“If I’m going to do this for you, I have one request,” she said, seizing her advantage. “It’s a big one.”

Will spread his hands. “I am in no real position to bargain, am I? What do you want, Freddie?”

“I want to witness the execution. It will make the perfect final chapter to the book. I know they allow selected members of the press to be present.”

“I don’t get to pick them. You’ll have to put your name down for that lottery.”

“But Jack Crawford is going to be there, right? He has influence. He could get me in.”

“Maybe. I can’t guarantee anything. And Jack isn’t exactly fond of you.”

“If you can get me in, maybe I’ll be more sympathetic toward you in my portrayal. Who can say?”

Will offered a tight smile. “I’ll do my best.”

“Excellent.”

“You’re practically giddy at the thought, aren’t you? The execution might not happen, you know.”

It was Freddie’s turn to smile. “We both know you wouldn’t have invited me here if you believed that.”

A beat of silence. His expression didn’t change, but she saw the pain in his eyes. 

“You may visit once a week, for one hour at a time, until you have everything you need,” Will said, as if nothing had happened. “It should take two, maybe three sessions, depending on how often you interrupt me when I talk. In ten days, I’m being transported to the Greensville unit in Jarratt. It’s not far. You can still visit me there, though we’re working toward a fairly strict deadline, as you can imagine.” 

“Then we should begin right away. Would you mind if I record our conversations?”

“I would insist upon it.”

She removed a small tape recorder from her purse and set it down on the metal counter. This model had been recommended to her by a somewhat sleazy private investigator she knew, and would pick Will’s voice up even through the muffle of the glass between them. Reaching into her purse again, she retrieved a notebook and pen, to transcribe her own observations while he talked. She switched the recorder on, and met his eye.

“This is Freddie Lounds. I am sitting here with Will Graham in the visitation room of the Sussex State Prison in Waverly, Virginia. The date is November 15th. On December 10th, Will Graham is scheduled to be executed in the electric chair for the murders of Cassie Boyle, Marissa Schurr, Dr Donald Sutcliffe, Georgia Madchen, and Abigail Hobbs. The time is… twelve minutes past ten. We are about to begin our first session. Mr Graham, can you confirm that you are not being coerced in any way to speak to me, and wish to tell your story entirely of your own volition?”

“That is correct.”

Freddie crossed one slender leg over the other, and flashed Will a practised smile. 

“Great. So Mr Graham. Tell me your story.”

And he did.


	6. Chapter 6

His last appointment for the day was almost over. Dr Lecter nodded intermittently as his patient droned on, the fingers of one hand resting under his chin, the other hand playing with a pen, resisting the urge to glance at his watch. His mind was elsewhere. 

It was almost six. The letter from Will had arrived approximately eight hours prior, and he had only had time to read it once before commencing a solid block of appointments for the day. Will’s words lingered in his mind, consuming all his concentration. The envelope lay on his desk. If he craned his neck, he could see it from his chair. He remained still, his face registering a faint twitch of displeasure. 

“Dr Lecter? Are you listening to me?”

“Of course,” Hannibal said, lifting his eyes to meet the patient’s. A garden-variety manic depressive. Tedious. Very tedious. “From what you have told me, I believe you have been making great progress. I am afraid, though, that is the end of our session for today. Please continue taking the new medication that I prescribed, and I will see you next week.”

He showed the man out, nodding graciously at his fumbling words of gratitude, and locked the door behind him. Silence settled over his office like a pall. With slow, deliberate steps, Hannibal crossed the room to draw the drapes, before settling at his desk. He reached out to turn the reading lamp on, and drew the letter towards himself with both hands.

It had taken a great deal of restraint on his part not to write to Will himself. Dr Lecter was not one to daydream, but he could not deny that as he sat opposite his less than interesting patients, he often found himself recalling his sessions with Will. Twice in the first year of Will’s imprisonment, he had caught himself uncapping his fountain pen and beginning to draft a note, before coming to his senses. It would not have been wise to allow Will to know he was missed. 

To call Dr Lecter’s decisions regarding Will’s fate a plan would have been a gross oversimplification. Key decisions in this matter were being made largely on a whim. That was not to say that he had no endgame; the fact of the matter was, he had several, and had yet to decide between them. Dr Lecter follows several trains of thought at once, without distraction from any, and one of the trains is always for his own amusement. Considering the repercussions of each action or inaction he might take was proving endlessly fascinating. 

He could have intervened at many intervals during the trial, but decided against it. A month, or six months, or a year into Will’s appeals process, he could have done any number of things to prove the man’s innocence, but had chosen not to. Watching the shock waves of Will’s predicament reverberating through his friends and colleagues had been too interesting. He decided to let Will stew a little longer. He was curious what would happen.

In another world, Will would be free by now and their friendship could, perhaps, have resumed its course. Hannibal considered this from time to time, with a trace of regret. He missed the stimulation of Will’s company, it was true. But the situation he had manoeuvred himself into was greatly satisfying, and he was hesitant to stop now, given how far he had allowed this to go already. 

He could let Will die. It would be easy. The courts were not going to help Will now, and he could not help himself. His compassion for Will was an inconvenience; it ran the risk of circumventing his better judgement. Removing Will from his life would be a prudent move. And having a front row seat for the chaos which would ensue the moment he decided to make it known that an innocent man had been executed, watching the FBI and the courts scramble to explain themselves as the gravity of their mistake dawned on them, the holy infallible system they’d sworn by suddenly thrown into a state of total upheaval – it would be like watching a church roof collapse mid-Mass, packed pews, choir singing. A beautiful tragedy. A faint smile crossed Hannibal’s lips as he imagined it. Jack and Alana would take it hard. If he were ever caught after, they would not understand why he had allowed this to happen. To let Will suffer. 

But elegance was more important than suffering. 

Hannibal mulled this course of action over for a time, his fingers tapping absently on the letter beneath them. If he allowed this thing to run its natural course, he wanted to be witness it happen. He believed Jack would allow him to be present, if he framed his desire under the guise of moral support for Will in his final hour of need. It was not that he would derive much pleasure from watching the act itself, though he was curious to see how Will would approach it. Hannibal felt certain that Will would go into it with whatever dignity he had left, despite what Alana feared about the man’s declining mental health. But that was not why Hannibal wanted to be there. 

No, he just wanted to watch the faces of everyone else in the room. 

He uttered a soft hum of amusement as he slipped the letter from its envelope and unfolded it. The sight of Will’s small, scratched handwriting caused a faint smile to cross Hannibal’s lips, almost imperceptible. He ran his fingers over the indentations of the words, then lifted the cheap paper to his nose and inhaled.

Sparing Will was certainly an appealing option, though there was danger in that route. Will was volatile at the best of times, and vengeance would be the first thing on his mind once he got out. If he decided to pursue it lawfully, their cat-and-mouse game could continue as if uninterrupted by these long years of separation. Hannibal thought it more likely, though, that Will might try once again to put a bullet in his head. He would have to be very careful. 

But there was a chance, a slim chance admittedly, but a chance nonetheless that Will might be made to understand the greater purpose behind Hannibal’s actions. Who else was there in Will’s corner, after all, other than an indifferent lawyer and friends who believed unequivocally in his guilt? Jack and Alana had abandoned him to his fate. Hannibal had made him see that, opened his eyes to the depths of his supposed friends’ apathy towards him once he had outlived his usefulness, and then Hannibal alone had set him free. It was a risk to trust that Will might be forgiving or possibly even grateful, but the thought of it made Hannibal hesitant in his willingness to let the man die without finding out. 

Decisions, decisions. Two paths diverged in the halls of his mind. He could not travel both, nor could he linger at the fork much longer. Will had twenty-four days left to live. 

As enjoyable as the game had been, all games must inevitably end. 

Smoothing the letter out on the desk, Hannibal read Will’s brief note once more, before reaching for a sheet of his own stationary and setting down an equally brief reply. In his ornate hand, he carefully wrote out Will’s Department of Corrections inmate number and the address of the prison on a fresh envelope, and tucked his letter inside. He hesitated only a moment, then licked the seal and closed it.

All things draw toward their end. He had known, had he not, when he first met Will that he may have to lose him. He was reluctant, but there was as much beauty to be found in Will’s death as in the potential for his continued friendship. 

Setting the letters aside, Hannibal poured himself a glass of fine cabernet sauvignon and settled back in his chair. He would not trouble himself with the decision just yet. Not before he’d spoken to Will.

Will had asked to see him at his earliest convenience. He had not stated why. 

Hannibal was not one to pass up a polite invitation.

It would be good to see him, even if it was only to say goodbye. Hannibal sipped his wine and closed his eyes. He knew that Will almost certainly was plotting something. He’d had years to plot. That was fine. The game could use a little shake-up towards its conclusion. 

Besides, Hannibal knew how to punish Will if the man resorted to unpleasantness. There was something he’d kept from him, something he could reveal at the last minute when there was nothing Will could do about it, except take it to his grave. 

Hannibal smiled. 

In the end, he could tell Will what he’d done with Abigail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the short chapter. I'm a tease, I know. Longer chapters to come and a little action hopefully :) Thanks for continuing to read, I hope you're enjoying it so far.


	7. Chapter 7

Tick. 

Tick.

Tick.

The relentless march of the clock and his own rapid shallow breaths were the only sounds to penetrate the clammy silence.

Tick. 

Tick.

The straps were tight across his chest. His nails scraped against the wood. An eyeless mask covered his face, made of something that lay thick and heavy against his skin – leather, maybe. A bead of sweat ran down his nose. 

_Tick._

_“Will…”_

His whole body stiffened. He tried to move his head toward the sound, but there was a thick strap beneath his chin, holding him rigidly in place. He sensed rather than heard her approaching, and tried to pull away, but of course he could barely move an inch.

She was very close. He could smell the sweet, earthy scent of her, like the air after a light summer rain, sweet with dew dripping from flowers. But it was different than he remembered; there was something beneath it, something rotting and putrid. It was death. Abigail stank of death. 

“Why did you kill me, Will?” she said. She was right in front of him now. They must have been almost toe to toe. Black terror flooded his heart. 

“I didn’t…” he murmured, his mouth very dry. The sound was almost lost under the mask. “I didn’t…”

That dreadful stench of decay filled his mouth and nose as she leant towards him. Will almost retched, his chest heaving against the restraints holding him. A pair of hands cradled his covered face. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. 

“Abigail…” he gasped, terrified now. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t protect you in this life. But I didn’t kill you.”

He sensed her cold lips lingering very close to his ear.

_“Then why are you here, Will?”_

“Will?”  
He startled awake, heart racing. His brow was slick with sweat. The stench of death lingered in his mind a moment, horrifyingly real, and then it was gone. 

He was sitting on a metal stool in the visitation room, where the guards had left him to await his visitor, who was very late. Beverly was sitting on the other side of the glass. A fleeting look of concern crossed her face, before she locked down her expression into something impassive and hard. She had not removed her coat. 

He cleared his throat and picked up the receiver on his end, cradling it between his cheek and shoulder a moment to rub the phantom sensation of the straps from his wrists. “Sorry, I must have… dozed off. I haven’t really been sleeping. It’s good to see you.”

Bev’s eyes scanned him warily. She hadn’t wanted to come when he wrote her, but her conscience had gotten the better of her. She wouldn’t stay long. A quick goodbye was all she owed him. 

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said, glancing at her watch, grateful for the excuse to look away from Will, if only for a second. In truth, she’d arrived at the prison ahead of schedule. The traffic had been light. She’d parked in the quiet lot and stared at the razor wire on the fences for a long time, trying to compose herself, trying to make sense of where she was. She hadn’t cried. Beverly hadn’t cried about Will since she’d heard the verdict from the trial, when she’d shed a quick tear in the ladies’ restroom at the lab before wiping her face with a paper towel and going back to work. She knew she was good at what she did, and the evidence did not lie; Will had been her friend, but Will was a murderer, and she didn’t have many tears to spare for murderers. She would allow herself to cry for him one more time, once it was over. Then she would get back to work. 

Will pushed his sweat-damp curls away from his forehead, painfully aware he was making Beverly uncomfortable. The poised demeanour he’d maintained while talking with Freddie earlier that week had crumbled under the weight of nightmare after nightmare. He had barely slept in days and, somehow, had lost even more weight. He knew he looked like shit, and he hated Bev to see him this way, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. 

“How are you?” he said.

“Fine,” Bev said, her jaw tight. 

“How’s work?”

“Fine.”

Will smiled thinly. It looked terrible on his gaunt face. 

“You don’t want to be here,” he said.

Bev frowned. “No, I don’t.”

“Why did you come?”

“You asked me to. And I’m saying goodbye. I won’t be back.”

Will nodded, wetting his lips. “I appreciate you coming. And I appreciated you sending the books. But I need one more favour.”

“No.”

Will cocked his head to one side. “Harsh, Bev. You’re not even willing to hear a dying man’s last request?”

“You’re not a dying man. You did this to yourself.”

He heard Abigail’s voice again, soft as the wind. _Then why are you here, Will?_

Beverly did not fail to notice Will flinch and glance to his left, as if someone else had spoken. He swallowed visibly, his eyes cast down. His knuckles were white where they gripped the receiver. 

“I have twenty-two days, Bev. A week from now, they’re moving me to the building I’m going to die in.”

“I know.”

“Then you know I don’t have time to be wasting yours. I need something from you. And I’m willing to give something in return.”

Bev settled back in her plastic chair and fixed him with a dubious glare. “I don’t think you’ve got much to offer, Will.”

His eyes were alarmingly sharp for someone who, it seemed to Bev, was teetering on the precipice of going mad.

“I could take a look at a case for you. I’m prepared to bet there’s at least one case that you’ve all come up empty on. I wouldn’t know what’s happened recently, of course. They don’t let me have newspapers.”

“We’ve been doing just fine without you.”

“But there’s always one,” he murmured, eyes boring into hers. “Tell me, how many more bodies will that killer have to add to his resume before you wish you’d heard me out?”

Bev glanced down at the hand curled into a fist her lap, where Will couldn’t see. It was shaking. 

“Alright,” she said, looking up at him levelly. “I’m listening. What do you want, Will?”

“I want you to ignore all the evidence against me.”

She raised her eyebrows. “No, I can’t do that.”

Will suddenly smacked his palm on the glass between them, making it rattle. Beverly jumped. The door behind Will flew open and a heavyset guard stuck his head into the room.

“Inmate! You touch that glass again and you’re going back into the hole until your date, you understand me?”

Will’s shoulders sagged. He nodded, without turning round to look at the man. The guard glanced at Bev, then closed the door once more. She could see him watching through its grimy window. 

Will’s face had fallen. He looked defeated. Tired, and pale, and defeated.

“They put me in the hole to punish me when I get upset,” he muttered, with a slight shrug. “It’s a windowless box with no light. As opposed to the windowless box I’ve spent most of the past three years in, for something I didn’t do.”

Beverly was shaken. She said nothing.

Will pushed a hand through his lank hair, visibly agitated. “In three weeks, they’re going to put me to death, Bev. I didn’t kill those people. I know you don’t believe me, but it’s the truth. And I… I’ve just about come to terms with the fact that it’s going to happen. Only a miracle could stop it now, or…”

He paused, taking a deep, shaky breath. 

“Look. I know you feel a burden of guilt, since it was your evidence that convicted me. But you were doing your job, and you’re so good at what you do. I know you didn’t make a mistake. And I don’t have the right to ask you for anything, but I’m desperate. I just need you to hear me out on this. One minute, no commitments, and you can leave after I’ve said my piece, if you want to. Please.”

Beverly hesitated, a lump in her throat. She wanted to be anywhere else in the world at that moment.

“One minute,” she said. “Say your piece.”

“Thank you.” 

Will glanced around as if someone might be listening, and leaned closer to the glass between them. _He’s really going mad in here,_ Bev thought, feeling sick. But when he spoke, his words were slow and even, and heavy in their solemnity. 

“The real killer is still out there. It’s exciting him to watch this happen to me, knowing he’s the only one who can stop it. But a secret’s no fun if you keep it to yourself. He’s thought about revealing the truth before now, but he’s having too much fun at my expense. And when I’m…” He hesitated, closing his eyes, breathing deeply through his nose. “When I’m dead, he’ll want to humiliate the FBI by letting _everybody_ know they got the wrong guy. He’ll make his presence known, but he won’t be caught. Not unless you know exactly when and where to look, that is.”

“Alright. Hypothetically. Who is he?”

Will’s eyes burned into her own. “You know.”

“Yeah, I know who you’re going to say. I examined him myself, Will. We found nothing.”

“Because he knew you were looking. He had a head start. The only way to catch him is when his guard is down. And I know the perfect time. I can help you catch him, Beverly.”

“I’m not going on some wild goose chase for you, Will. I’m sorry, okay, I really am. None of us wanted it to come to this. But we’re not going to dig up some new eleventh-hour evidence which miraculously exonerates you. I think you need to accept that this is going to happen.”

Will wiped the back of his hand across his lips, unable to meet her eye now. He was shaking.

“That’s how you’re going to catch him,” he murmured. “He’ll want to watch. He wouldn’t miss it for the world. And while he’s there, assured in how very fucking clever he’s been to trick you all so thoroughly… He won’t be expecting somebody to be investigating his home.”

“Will…”

“Listen to me. I said I’d help you catch one, and here it is. He’s responsible for more than just the deaths I’m accused of. Hannibal Lecter is the Chesapeake Ripper. And you know his work better than anyone, you’ve seen it up close. What he does requires privacy. He has a workshop somewhere, and I’m willing to bet my life that it’s in a secret room somewhere in his home, probably in the basement. That way he can be comfortable while he works, because his work takes time.”

“Let’s say I believe you. The Ripper has always taken surgical trophies. If Hannibal’s the Ripper, what’s he doing with his trophies?”

Will wet his lips, a bad taste in his mouth. “I’ve been thinking a lot about that. I think… He’s eating them.”

Beverly digested that a moment. “You’re saying the Ripper is a cannibal, like Garret Jacob Hobbs?”

“No, not like Hobbs. Hobbs ate his victims to honour them. The Ripper eats his victims because they’re no better to him than pigs.”

Beverly glanced at the clock on the wall, unsure how to feel about what she was hearing. Their hour was almost up. She wished now she’d come sooner. This did not sound like the rantings of a desperate lunatic anymore. It was starting to feel frighteningly close to truth.

She chewed her lip, her hand tapping nervously in her lap. “I don’t know, Will. There’s no physical evidence whatsoever that points to Hannibal Lecter being the Chesapeake Ripper. Not like…”

“Not like you found on me, I know, I know. But he fits the Ripper’s profile. He’s got surgical skills. He’s a narcissist, he-”

“Will, stop. I can’t just go snooping around Dr Lecter’s house without a warrant, and I’m not going to get a warrant just because a death row convict three weeks from his execution started pointing fingers. It’s not going to stop the execution, you know that right? You know how many men in your situation start spouting wild theories this close to the end. The courts won’t even hear it. I’m sorry.”

Will’s lip was trembling. When he spoke, his voice was so low she almost missed it.

“I’m not asking you to fight to stop this thing. I… I’m asking you to let me die. God knows I don’t want to… The truth is, I’m terrified… But my execution is the perfect distraction. You know he’ll be here. His house will be empty for hours – you’ll have all the time you need. If you find nothing, then he never needs to know you were there. But if I’m right… If I’m right…”

He broke off. His eyes were wet. He looked away, one hand rubbing distractedly at the other’s wrist.

“Beverly, I-” 

The door behind him opened again. The burly guard stepped inside, holding handcuffs. Beverly could see two others waiting in the hall. 

“Graham. Visiting hour is over.”

“Just one more minute, please.”

“You’ve had your time, inmate. Stand up and hold out your wrists. Don’t make me ask again.”

Will hesitated, the first tears trembling down his pallid cheeks. Then he pressed one palm to the glass, his eyes wide and frantic and fixed on Beverly’s. 

“Just promise me you’ll think about it,” he said, in a rush. “He’s not going to stop, and he’s so careful. I’m the best chance you’ve got of catching him. Promise me you’ll consider it, Bev. Please.” 

A single tear ran down Beverly’s face. In the second before the guards grabbed Will and hauled him to his feet, she placed her palm over his. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, unsure if he could hear, but feeling it needed to be said regardless. “I’m so sorry, Will.”

Will had gone limp, allowing the cuffs to be placed on him without further protest, anxious to avoid going to the hole. But he managed to call over his shoulder to her one more time before they dragged him from the room. 

“Be careful. Goodbye.”

The door slammed shut behind him. The receiver on Will’s side of the glass swung in small circles from its cable where he’d dropped it. Bev was left alone.

She picked up her purse and sat, clutching it in her lap, suddenly reluctant to leave. She was trembling in a way she hadn’t since she was in college and waiting to start a final exam. It dawned on her that the image of Will being manhandled from the room in handcuffs was probably going to be the last time she saw him alive, and a wave of sadness crashed over her. 

Beverly was an intelligent and rational woman. She trusted her own judgement, and she trusted the evidence. The evidence told her that Will was lying. He might not even realise he was doing it. It seemed entirely possible that the solitary confinement had driven him a little mad, and the fairy tale he had constructed to cope with what was happening to him had been accepted by his addled mind as truth. 

The evidence all pointed to that. Her gut was telling her something different.

She did not understand why Will would be so adamant that she continued investigating Dr Lecter even after his own death if he didn’t believe she would find something. 

The district attorney had painted Will as a monster who killed brutally and without remorse, then played the poor wounded bird when caught. Bev had never believed that. She knew he was perfectly capable of doing such things but had fought his urges at every turn until, unfortunately, he had snapped. 

Now she was not so sure. The cold terror she had seen in his eyes seemed genuine, and more than just the last desperate play of a killer trying anything to save his own skin. 

She signed out and retrieved her cell phone from the front desk. A light dusting of snow had fallen while she was inside. She turned the heat on in her car and drove slowly back to Quantico, humming tunelessly along with the radio without really listening. The drive took about two hours, and by the time she was walking through the doors of the lab, she had made up her mind.

Jimmy and Brian were bent over a body in the morgue, their heads together, murmuring. Both looked up guiltily as she entered. She swore they were the biggest gossips she knew. 

“Hey Bev,” Jimmy said, his smile a little false. “How, uh, how’s Will Graham?”

“He’s had better days, I imagine,” Beverly said, slipping into her lab coat. 

“Did he ask about us?”

She rolled her eyes. “He’s got other things on his mind right now, Jim.”

Jimmy made a face and turned back to the corpse. “Rude.”

She snapped on her gloves, frowning. “He’s still claiming to be innocent. Do you think it’s possible we could have made a mistake when we investigated him?”

Brian turned to glare at her. “He been filling your head with his stories?”

“No. But he’s got three weeks to live, and I think his stories at least deserve to be heard.”

“He killed five people.” 

“That we know of,” Jimmy chipped in. 

“Yeah,” Beverly said, joining them at the corpse. “Maybe.”

“The guy deserves to fry, Bev” Brian said, nudging her lightly with his elbow. “Don’t let it get to you. This time next month, this will all be over. Graham will be dead and we can move on.”

Beverly nodded, and didn’t bring up Will again. 

But when she left that night, she took the Ripper file with her.


	8. Chapter 8

Alana was having nightmares.

Hannibal lay on his side, watching her writhe in her sleep. She was a beautiful creature, still naked from their lovemaking only hours before. Her dark hair tumbled over the white pillowcase. With a soft sound of distress, she rolled over and mumbled Will’s name.

Careful not to wake her, Hannibal slipped from the bed and put on his robe. He opened the curtains and watched the first grey light of morning colour the bruised winter sky, committing the sight to memory. He was still undecided in what path he would take regarding Will, but had for years been preparing his memory palace for the eventuality that he might be apprehended. If Will’s treatment was anything to go by, he doubted very much that he would have a window. 

Will had sixteen days to live, and would be permitted to see the sky perhaps twice in that time. That was not an experience that Hannibal wished to be privy to, but it was a possibility that lay in his future if he chose to let Will live. The decision lay before him with all the excitement and promise of an unopened door. If he was going to open it, he would have to act soon. Tick, tick. Time was running out for dear Will. 

What he had done to divert attention away from himself and onto an innocent man was nothing short of masterful. It was foolish, surely, to consider throwing it all away to spare a man who wished him dead, or incarcerated. 

Hannibal brushed a strand of silver hair behind his ear, his eyes fixed on the horizon, thinking. 

It would be foolish, yes. But still, the urge itched like a fresh suture. 

“Hannibal?”

He turned round, a warm smile already in place. “Good morning. Did I wake you?”

Alana was sitting up and stretching. Her face looked drawn. “No. I wasn’t sleeping well anyway. Bad dreams.”

Hannibal crossed back over to the bed and settled amongst the sheets, allowing her to crawl into his arms and rest her head against his chest. Her body was trembling slightly.

“Do I need ask the nature of your bad dreams?”

“Probably not.”

“Would you like to talk about them?”

Alana sighed. “In the few jerky hours of sleep I do get, I see him dying. I see it over and over again. And he’s _screaming_ , Hannibal. And there’s nothing I can do to stop it.” She swallowed hard, comforted by the solid presence of his living body beneath hers. “I feel like we’ve all been given a death sentence. We’re all just trapped in this endless countdown, waiting for it to happen, unable to move until it does. I feel helpless.”

He stroked her hair with his thumb, his eyes drifting to the window again. “I’ve always found the idea of death comforting. The thought that my life could end at any moment frees me to fully appreciate the beauty and art and horror of everything this world has to offer. But what is happening to Will is deeply troubling, both for him and for all who observe it. It is not death, but stagnation. The act of killing him is starting to feel like a great mercy, and a great wrong.”

“I’m so conflicted that I’m struggling to know my own mind anymore,” Alana murmured. “I want him to be dead, and I don’t want him to die.”

“It is human nature to try to stop death,” Hannibal said. “We eat well and we exercise and take our medicine in the belief that it will prolong our lives, because life is precious. What we try to forget is that there may come a time when our suffering overwhelms our joy. When our losses and fears outnumber our dreams. And in those times… Perhaps death is a gift.”

Alana pulled away slightly from his embrace to look him in the eye. “But is it a gift that you think Will deserves? God knows he doesn’t want it.”

Hannibal held her gaze, considering his answer. “I shall let you know once I’ve seen him.”

She kissed him softly beside the mouth, before slipping out of bed. He watched her supple body bend to retrieve the previous night’s clothes from where she’d dropped them. Alana had told him that Will knew about them, had figured it out. The idea troubled her, but not Hannibal. It had worked out better than he had planned. Alana was probably the only woman that Will had even seen, let alone touched, since being incarcerated, and he had harboured romantic feelings for her long before that, which she had rejected. And now Alana was, in Will’s eyes, sleeping with the enemy. That was more fuel for the fire that was growing in Will. If he was spared, Hannibal wanted him to burn every bridge except one. Theirs.

“When are you leaving?” Alana said, fastening her bra in front of the mirror.

“Soon. The drive could take four hours in traffic, and our visit is scheduled for one.”

“Do you want me to come?”

Hannibal smiled at the reluctance in her voice. “No. I believe Will may be more comfortable talking to me if we are alone.”

“I’m worried about him. He’s been so angry with you. If he lashes out, he’ll make his last weeks very difficult for himself. More than they would be already.”

Hannibal climbed off the bed and came to stand behind her, massaging her shoulders. “I will do everything in my power to help Will, whatever that help may be. He asked me to come. I hope that violence is the last thing on his mind. His final weeks will be easier for him if he comes to terms with what is happening, and why.”

Reaching up to touch the hand on her shoulder, she offered his reflection a strained smile. “Thank you. For making this a little easier.”

He kissed her neck. “I could say the same to you.”

They did not speak of Will again while they dressed and ate a quiet breakfast, Alana reading over the notes she had made for her lecture that afternoon, and Hannibal scanning the thick paperwork of the latest doomed appeal Will’s lawyer was filing. When all the coffee had been drank and the croissants eaten, Alana kissed him quickly before they climbed into their respective cars. It was ten a.m.

With Beethoven’s Fifth drifting from the car stereo, Hannibal set off for Virginia.

 

*

 

The morning was very cold, the sky heavy with snow. 

Will stood in the small caged rectangle that constituted the exercise yard, his hands thrust deep in the pockets of the ill-fitting coat they’d loaned him, his face tilted toward the weak winter sun. He was being observed closely, but he wasn’t doing anything. For the first couple of years, when he’d still believed he’d get out one day, he’d used this bi-weekly pleasure to work out in the relative freedom of the fresh air. Later, he had taken to pacing. Now he just stood. His eyes were closed. A faint smile played over his lips.

He could smell the trees. 

In his mind, he cast a line into the frigid waters of the stream. It was not always safe to come here anymore. Snow crusted the banks. He heard terrible sounds from deep in the forest sometimes. The black antlered creature prowled often in the shadows, watching with its inhumanly bright blank eyes. 

Today he was alone. Nothing was biting, and he was very cold, but that was alright. He wished he could live in this empty dream for the rest of the little time he had left, and not have to worry about what was to come. 

But that was not entirely true. He wanted to fight. He’d done everything in his power to save himself. There was nothing left. Only Hannibal could stop this now.

_“Will.”_

The guard watching him noticed Will twitch. The smile had slipped from his face.

Abigail was standing on the bank, a silk scarf wound around her throat, rippling slightly in the breeze. She was crying.

Hannibal stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders.

“Will,” Abigail said again, her eyes wide with fear and sadness. “I’m so sorry.”

The wind picked up. It caught the scarf and tugged it free from Abigail’s pale neck. Will saw her throat had been cut almost from ear to missing ear. Blood cascaded down her chest, staining the snow around her feet. 

“You couldn’t protect her in this life,” Hannibal said. “You might as well have killed her.”

He removed his hands from her shoulders as he spoke, and Abigail fell forward, into the water. Will watched her sink, unable to move. When he looked back at Hannibal, he saw the antlered creature in his place, blood dripping from its elongated fingers.

“You killed her,” Will said, shivering. The water around his waist was turning red. “I… I didn’t hurt her.”

In a moment of confusion, he wondered if that was true. He could see his arm wrapped tight around her chest; feel the weight of the knife in his other hand, the light glinting off its curved blade. He could hear her pleading as he cut her. Taste… taste her flesh on his tongue. 

“I didn’t kill her,” he repeated, uncertain now. Perhaps he had. That was why he was here, wasn’t it?

The antlered man was watching him. It lifted its hand, and pointed at Will.

A pair of cold, rotting hands grabbed at him from under the water. Abigail’s face rose from the icy depths, greying skin hanging loose from white bone. Water poured from her mouth as it opened to accuse him. Will cried out and tried to stumble away, terrified of what she would say, but her clammy fingers wrapped around his wrist, and she dragged him to his knees, his chin only just cresting the water. 

“You can make this easy for yourself, Will,” Hannibal called. “Put your head back. Close your eyes. Wade into the quiet of the steam.”

Will tried to resist, but Abigail’s grip was too strong, pulling him down, down, freezing water filling his mouth, his nose, his lungs. As his head went under, he caught one last glimpse of Hannibal standing on the bank, his dark suit standing out blood red against the snow. He was smiling.

“Graham. Your hour’s up. Time to go back to your cell.”

Will opened his eyes.

He was in the yard. Two guards were watching him from the doorway, stamping their feet against the cold. 

Will’s tired eyes surveyed them without interest, before returning to stare at the grassy fields beyond the fences. For a moment, he thought he saw Abigail standing out there, blood on her face, watching him. Then he blinked, and she was gone.

One of the guards snapped his fingers to get Will’s attention. 

“Come on, Graham. Let’s not make a thing out of this. It’s your last day here. We don’t want you to spend it in the hole, but you will if you don’t start cooperating.”

Will thought the man looked sympathetic. He was surprised. It wasn’t something he was used to here. In this place, he wasn’t a person. He was just a number, and a crime. 

He looked up at the sky one more time. He breathed in deeply, wishing he could hold the fresh air in his lungs a little longer. Then he offered his wrists to be cuffed, and allowed them to lead him back inside. 

He was being transferred in the morning to the building he would die in. He would not see the yard again. There was little he would miss about this grey place, but he would miss the yard, even if it was a glorified dog kennel. 

The guards did not manhandle him as much as usual, even when he dragged his feet. He knew they were taking pity on him. Part of him wanted to scream and push back, get a rise out of them, but he was so tired. It wasn’t worth it.

“Your visitation is after lunch,” one guard said, as they put him back in his cell and removed his cuffs through the slot in the door. “You can have a little extra time if you want it.”

“Thank you,” Will murmured, rubbing his wrists and sitting down on his bed. “But I doubt that will be necessary.”

The slot on the door closed. He was left alone. 

Will scanned his tiny cell. He’d spent close to twenty-five thousand hours in this space, his mind slowly cannibalising itself as it ran out of other things to devour. Twenty-five thousand hours wasting to a hulk of his former self, wishing bitterly for a quick and merciful end, however it came. Twenty-five thousand hours of slow torture, but if he’d been offered the chance to do it again, he would. In a heartbeat. Anything to avoid what was coming. Anything.

A small cardboard box had been left on his desk for him to pack his things into.

Will stared at it a moment, then put his head in his hands.

Lunch was a stale sandwich filled with some kind of greyish mystery meat that he didn’t care to investigate, accompanied by a cup of watery orange juice, and three extraneous slices of bread on the side. Will drank the juice, but didn’t touch the rest. He’d barely eaten in a week. He was thinner than he’d ever been. Throughout the years of imprisonment, he’d always tried to keep himself in decent shape, filling the empty hours with a regimen of push-ups and squats, always clinging to the hope he’d be out one day soon, any day now, just keep going. Keeping his mind and his body strong had been so important to him, and he’d done well, given the circumstances. But it had all been for nought. He wasn’t hungry.

He had two small photographs taped to the wall beside his bed, both of which Alana had sent him. They were of his dogs. Alana had looked after them for him the first year he was inside, always clinging to the belief that he’d be out soon and would want his life to continue as if this terrible thing hadn’t happened. But as the prospect of him ever getting out had descended into an unfunny joke, and his home and almost everything he owned had been sold to pay his legal bills, she’d lost faith. All but two of the dogs had been put up for adoption. Of the two she had kept, one had died the previous year. Will had been devastated.

Carefully, he took the pictures off the wall and placed them between the pages of a book for safekeeping. He put the book in the box along with three others, his spare jumpsuit, and his few toiletries. It was depressing to see what he had been reduced to, his whole life barely filling a cardboard box. 

With nothing else to do, and afraid to retreat back into the stream for fear of what he might find in its waters, he lay down on his bed to await his visitor. 

 

*

 

Hannibal pulled into the prison’s parking lot earlier than he had expected. Traffic on the interstate had been pleasurably light. He was feeling very good, his excitement increasing with every mile he had driven. To see Will after so many years of separation would be magnificent, even if it was to be bookended with the man’s untimely death.

He took a moment to appreciate the brutal architecture of the prison as he strode towards the visitors’ reception. The sight of tall fences and coils of razor wire did not frighten him as they would many men far less guilty than him. Dr Lecter was not afraid of incarceration, though he did not have any particular desire to experience it first-hand. The necessary preparations had been made, should it come down to that, though it would take a very clever man to put him there. Such a shame the FBI had thrown the book at the one man who might be able to. Amused, Dr Lecter whistled to himself as he approached the building in which Will had suffered for all these years. 

He smelled her before he saw her, his nostrils flaring in surprise. 

“Ms Lounds. What a surprise.”

Freddie paused in the doorway of the visitors’ reception, caught off guard. Then she smiled, sensing an opportunity. 

“Dr Lecter. Will said you’d be coming today. You’re early.”

She reached into her purse and, in one fluid motion, switched on her tape recorder as she pulled out the first thing she could find.

“Gum?” she said, offering him the packet with another practised smile. “The air in there is so stale. It always makes me want to wash my mouth out.”

“You’re a tabloid journalist, Ms Lounds,” Hannibal said, his face pleasant but a warning glint in his eyes. “I imagine, given the vulgar things you write, that urge occurs to you often.”

“Mmm yes. I ought to wash my mouth out with soap. That way I can be crystal clean. Just like you, right? The FBI investigated Will Graham’s claims about you and found absolutely nothing. Not a single trace of wrongdoing. Funny, that he could have gotten it so wrong, given his track record.”

Hannibal’s lips twitched into a predatory smile. “You’ve been speaking to Will Graham.”

“I have indeed. I’m his official biographer.”

A slight lift of his brows was the only indication he gave of his surprise. “I see Will has been keeping himself busy.”

“He has plenty of paper to write letters, and plenty of time to tell his story.”

“Not anymore.”

Freddie shifted her weight slightly, her spine straightening a fraction. She was much shorter than him, but she had never let men intimidate her and wasn’t about to start now. 

“Are you going to be there on the night?” she asked. 

“If Will asks me to be.”

“Well, perhaps I’ll see you there. But I must be getting along. I have a lot of work to do if this manuscript is going to be on my publisher’s desk the morning after the execution. Give me a call if you’d like to be interviewed for it. Your name appears quite regularly.”

With that, she strode away toward her car, feeling Hannibal’s eyes following her the whole way. When she turned around, he was already inside the building. Inside the car, she dug her camera out of the glove compartment and adjusted the lens. With the radio on low, and the notes she’d taken from that day’s session with Will spread over her lap, she settled down to wait. Dr Lecter would have to come out sooner or later, and she would be ready. 

The reception was overly warm and stuffy. Hannibal removed his wool overcoat and folded it over his arm as he signed in. The bored receptionist informed him he was very early, but the inmate had finished his other scheduled visitation for that day so he might as well go right in. Hannibal thanked her for her hospitality as he clipped his visitors’ badge to his breast pocket, and stepped through the metal detector when prompted. A guard beckoned him to follow. Their footfalls on the scuffed linoleum echoed through the halls.

As if to spite anyone who complained of the excess heat in reception, the series of corridors leading to the visitation room were bitterly cold. Hannibal took in his surroundings with interest as they walked. To move unrestrained through these hallways, as a free man, having killed more people than any of Will’s unhappy neighbours…

“You a friend of his?” the guard leading the way asked, looking over his shoulder. “Graham, I mean.”

“In some capacities, yes. Unofficially, I was his psychiatrist.”

“His psychiatrist? Christ. Didn’t you see the signs? He’s a messed up guy.”

“Will Graham is a very troubled man.”

“You can say that again. He’s a screamer, all night long sometimes. Riles ‘em all up. Can’t wait to see the back of him to be honest.”

Hannibal’s lip twitched. “We live in hope that it won’t come to that.”

The guard grunted, unlocking a barred security gate and letting Hannibal through. “He’s certainly gotten popular recently. Barely had a visitor in years and now he’s flooded with them.”

“Out of curiosity, who else has visited Mr Graham? If you don’t mind my asking. He can be quite uncooperative with me when I ask him questions directly.”

“Yeah he’s uncooperative with all of us. Most of them wouldn’t dare because bad behaviour doesn’t look good in front of the parole board. Let’s see… His lawyer, obviously, and that nice brunette woman – she comes every month.”

“Dr Bloom.”

“Probably, I don’t know. That redhead reporter has been twice now. A man from the FBI, few weeks ago. And now you.”

“Is that all?”

“Yeah, far as I remember.”

Hannibal nodded, satisfied. He was impressed with Will’s moxie in recruiting Freddie Lounds – the woman was certainly obnoxious, but she was loud, and noise was what Will needed if he wanted anyone to even consider listening to him. Will had been one step ahead of him on that, and Hannibal admired him for it. But now Hannibal had the upper hand once more. Will could have written letters he didn’t know about of course, but his word carried so little weight these days that it hardly mattered. There would be no more surprises.

“It’s just through here,” the guard said, unlocking a door. “We’ll be right outside if you need anything. You have an hour.”

“Thank you officer,” Hannibal said, and stepped inside. 

He caught Will’s scent before he saw him, and his eyes drifted closed as he breathed it in. Gone was that dreadful aftershave, too long in the bottle, that had always lingered in his office long after Will passed through, and which, even now, Hannibal often fancied he caught a fleeting trace of in his more sentimental moments of reflection. In its place was cheap soap, sweat, depression. A hint of Freddie Lounds still hung in the air. 

His eyes opened and focussed on the shape of the man on the other side of the glass. Smoothing down the jacket of his suit, Hannibal crossed the room and took his time draping his overcoat over the back of his chair, before taking a seat himself. Finally, he allowed his hungry eyes to take in Will. 

Will was sitting stiffly, the receiver already held at his ear, watching. 

Hannibal reached into his breast pocket and removed his pocket square. He gave the plastic receiver on his end a cursory wipe, tucked the pocket square away, then lifted the receiver to his ear. 

“Hello, Will.”

Will swallowed. 

“Hello, Dr Lecter.”

And Hannibal smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The meeting with Hannibal and Will is finally here... In the next chapter. 
> 
> One update: I am working on small illustrations to accompany each chapter, including the previous ones, and hope to have some up soon so keep an eye out for those. Thank you all for continuing to read and comment, it means a lot to me.


	9. Chapter 9

When Dr Lecter revisited this place – this moment – in his memory palace, they were in his office. Hannibal sat in his usual chair with one leg crossed over the other and his hands folded at his midriff. Will sat stiffly opposite him, in the same chair he’d slumped in when Hannibal drugged him and drove him out of his mind. Will was dressed all in white, his jumpsuit starched and clean; Hannibal wore a fine suit of dark grey, flecked through with red. 

In reality, it was the same drab room that Will had said goodbye to Beverly in, the same dark space that Jack had turned his back on him. His jumpsuit was greying and stained and he hadn’t been allowed to shower in three days. The glass between them was scuffed, smeared with a hundred handprints. 

But as Dr Lecter settled opposite Will, sharing a room with him for the first time since the trial, both men held their breath a moment, letting the gravity of it settle over them like a shroud. Guards waited watchfully just outside the doors, but in that moment, in that place, they were alone together. 

“Thank you for coming,” Will said, after a brief silence. “I was surprised when you didn’t come sooner.”

“What was there for us to say to one another before this day? Other than empty threats and petty revelling.”

Will smiled, a hollow grimace. “I always knew that I would never win you over with appeals to your better nature. I doubt that’s changed. So why did you come?”

“Because you asked me to. And you because you are my friend.”

“You’re not my friend. The light from friendship won’t reach us for a million years. That’s how far away from friendship we are.”

Hannibal’s lips twitched into something that was almost a smile, but there was no mirth behind it. “I must admit, Will, I always wondered if you would break down and grovel when it came down to this. I should have known better. You would rather go to your death than ask me for help.”

“Sounds about right. I could grovel, if I thought it might help me… Appeal to your vanity… I’d be wasting my time, and we both know I don’t have a lot of that left. You’ll either do it or you won’t. Doesn’t matter what I say.”

“You’re not even going to try? Even to save your own skin.”

“No.”

“Remarkable boy, defiant to the bitter end. I do admire your courage. And yet you still asked me to come. Why?”

Will considered this, scratching his unshaven chin. Hannibal did not fail to notice the way that Will’s gaze drifted around the room without really seeing it, his face unhappy and tired. But when their eyes met again, he saw that fierce intelligence still brimming behind Will’s stare. Alana had been right; Will was still too sane for his own good. Hannibal was impressed with Will’s resilience. Proud, even. 

“I was certain that I needed to see you. I’m not sure I can remember why,” Will said, choosing his words slowly and without emotion. “I’ve spent years imagining this conversation. Going over every word I would say to you, writing the dialogue of my own salvation, or demise. But I look back and see the paper’s blank. I can’t even remember the genre. Is this a comedy or a tragedy, Dr Lecter? I don’t know. You’re the one orchestrating this thing. You get to decide the ending.”

“I think perhaps you just wanted to look at me. And be sure that I got a good look at you.”

Will shrugged. “Maybe. What is there left to say that hasn’t already been said, or thought... screamed?”

“There is everything and nothing. Imminent death opens many doors in the mind that previously went unheeded, or blissfully ignored. Grief forces us to the very precipice of ourselves, where we must confront our deepest desires and fears, even those we have denied in our hearts previously. Tell me, Will. What have you discovered about yourself?”

Will glared at him, his lip trembling. “I’ve discovered that I hate prison food, and that fantasising about killing you is sometimes the only way to get to sleep at night. What the fuck did you think I would discover?”

Hannibal raised an eyebrow, amused. “Prison has made you rude, Will.”

“I’m starting to feel like a broken record saying this to people, but three years on death row for someone else’s crimes will do that to a man. Sorry I can’t have a goddamn spring in my step like you do. You’re loving this, aren’t you? Watching my breakdown. I’m sure if you were in my position – and justly so – you’d go out fucking smiling.”

He stopped himself and took a deep, shuddering breath, his eyes closed. When they opened again, they were calm. 

“Sorry,” he said, with a hint of his old sarcasm. “I think I’m still stuck in the anger stage of grief. A dash of depression thrown in for good measure.”

“It is an unfortunate truth of psychiatry that there is no solution to grief. It just is,” Dr Lecter said. A slight pause, then: “If I cannot be your friend, then perhaps you will allow me to speak to you as your psychiatrist, and offer you some advice.”

“You were never my psychiatrist. We were only ever having conversations.”

A tight smile. “Conversationally, then, I’d suggest that acceptance might be a better stage to strive for than anger, or depression. Better for your friends, certainly.”

“Are you suggesting that I lie back and stop fighting this for the benefit of those who have to _watch_?” Will said, quiet anger simmering in his tone.

“You are causing great heartbreak to those who care about you. Especially Alana Bloom. She is tormented nightly by visions of your death. It is a disheartening thing to watch.”

Will did not miss the sly allusion Hannibal had made to his relationship with Alana. Knowing that Hannibal had touched her with the same hands that had torn apart a hundred lives, and that she had no idea… Will swallowed, sickened and wounded. 

Hannibal continued, dark amusement in his eyes. “In Plato’s account of the execution of Socrates, Socrates took the poison he was offered gladly, and chastised those friends who asked him to postpone the drinking of it. _I should only make myself ridiculous in my own eyes if I clung to life and hugged it when it has no more to offer._ Socrates believed that one should meet one’s end in a tranquil frame of mind, and told those who wept for him to be brave.”

“Well good for Socrates,” Will muttered. “But I’m finding my poison a little hard to swallow.”

“It doesn’t have to be hard,” Hannibal said. “To Socrates, death was not a defeat, but a cure. You can make this all go away. Just put your head back. Close your eyes. Wade into the quiet of the stream.”

Will twitched, feeling the ghost of Abigail’s fingers against his skin once again. “Wouldn’t that spoil all the fun for you?”

“I am merely suggesting that certain decisions you have made may impact negatively on those you still care about,” Hannibal said. “Someone could get hurt.”

Will’s fingers curled into a tight fist, but he resisted the urge to hit the glass as he had before. He would not let Hannibal rattle him. He would not give him the satisfaction. 

“If you touch Alana…” he said, under his breath, wishing the glass between them wasn't there so he could wrap his fingers around Hannibal's throat.

“Please, continue,” Hannibal said. “I am curious to know what you think you would do.”

Will trembled in impotent rage. Hannibal smiled.

“I know that you’ve enlisted the help of Freddie Lounds,” he continued. “Do you believe a tabloid hack can save you now?”

“No. But she can make your life messy after I’m gone.”

“Not necessarily. Is she aware that you are wilfully endangering her life by encouraging her to poke her nose where it doesn’t belong?”

“She can take care of herself.”

“Can she? If I am who you say I am, surely you don't think her a match for me? Such a slim and delicate pig. She would bend and break like a twig in a child's hands."

He let that threat sink in, unsmiling, before driving the point home.

"Terribly callous of you, Will. Just like your decision to hurt your friends. When you were offered the choice, didn’t you feel that lethal injection would be kinder for them to witness? A white bed, a little pinprick. None of that ugly apparatus. No writhing in agony. You would simply close your eyes and slip away. It would appear painless.”

Will was silent for a time, his eyes fixed on Hannibal’s. “You’re very clever,” he said, eventually. “Brilliant, actually. Make me feel guilty so I devote less time to trying to prove that you are.”

Hannibal smiled, and there was genuine affection behind it. It made Will’s skin crawl. “Ever the observant one, Will. It’s good to see you’ve kept your wits about you. Alana Bloom is of the opinion that you’re insane, and quite possibly dangerous. Jack Crawford believes something similar. They’ve confided in me their dreaded fears that you are indeed the monster you were accused of being in court. It’s easier for them to believe that you are a monster than it is for them to accept that you are their victim. Both are quietly relieved at the prospect of you being taken off their hands. But I always knew you who you were. And I think you do now as well. Hopefully you will see who your real friends are, at the end.”

Will was very quiet. “A real friend wouldn’t have done this to me.”

“How would you know? You’ve never had real friends before now.”

“ _You sent me to death row._ You made me believe… I don’t know how you did it, but you made me think that I’d killed her. That I’d killed Abigail.”

“How do you know for sure that you didn’t? You don’t remember.”

“I couldn’t… I wouldn’t.”

“You are capable of righteous violence because you are compassionate.”

“ _What was righteous about killing her?_ ”

“She was involved in her father’s murders. She knew who he was and she helped him lure his victims. She murdered Nicholas Boyle when he found out. She was going to be caught, and she couldn’t live with the guilt. You put her out of her misery.”

Will was shaking his head. All the blood had drained from his face. “I didn’t…”

“You had fantasised about killing her, Will. You called me to your house that morning because you couldn’t trust your own senses, and what I found was part of Abigail in your sink.”

“Stop talking.”

“All your friends have turned their backs on you, Will. They can’t wait for you to be dead so they don’t have to feel guilty anymore. But I am still here. I see what you really are – what you have always denied you are, even to yourself. And you see me. This is the clearest moment of our friendship.”

“We are not friends.”

“Keep telling yourself that. But I have no real desire to see you die a fortnight from now, and if our roles were reversed, I don’t believe you would want me to die either, not really. Then you would be alone.”

“I’m already alone.”

“You are alone because you are unique. You don’t have to be alone.”

Will looked away, his mind in turmoil. He was shaking. 

Convincing Hannibal that he had _found himself,_ that he had found Hannibal, might spare his life. Or it might not. It was entirely possible that Hannibal was just toying with him. That he would make Will confess the darkest parts of himself, make him understand exactly who he was and what he was capable of, then let him die anyway.

He could confess himself to Hannibal to try to save his own life. Hadn’t that thought crossed his mind when he first wrote the letter asking Hannibal to visit? Hadn’t he planned to manipulate Hannibal, as he had been manipulated? He couldn’t remember. Any plans he had made had scattered from his mind the moment that Will saw his face. Heard his voice. 

He could still do it. Easily. The trouble was, Will wasn’t sure anymore that it would be a lie. 

He was exhausted. He didn’t want to play this game with Hannibal anymore. Hannibal would make up his own mind, and Will would have to live with the decision he made. Or not. 

“What you did to me is in my head, and I’ll find it,” he said instead. “I’m going to find it, Dr Lecter, and when I do, there will be a reckoning. Even if I’m not here to see it.”

Hannibal gave a slight nod. He had never expected Will to beg. He was proud. “I’ve got huge faith in you, Will. I always have.”

There was a long silence. It was not an uncomfortable one. Both men saw the other for what they really were, for everything they were. In such moments of clarity, no words are needed.

“They’re transferring me tomorrow,” Will said, running a hand through his hair, no longer wanting to meet Hannibal’s eye. “They’re taking me to the prison where the death chamber is housed. I get to sit beside it for the next two weeks and listen to them rehearsing, before they strap me into the chair and flip the switch.”

“I have always found the electric chair a fascinating piece of apparatus,” Hannibal said. “Akin almost to medieval instruments of torture in its brutal honesty.”

“Apparatus which demonstrates the very worst of mankind. Designed for the very worst of mankind.”

“So much of this country has ceased its usage, opting instead for a procedure which placates those who view it with its clean and medical appearance. Many view the electric chair as a relic of the past. Interesting you would choose it.”

Will smiled grimly. “Where would the fun be, watching me paralysed with chemicals, unable to even scream? I might as well give you all a show.”

Hannibal’s dark eyes glinted like rubies in the hollow shadows of his face. “Admirable.”

“I’ve spoken to my lawyer. You’ve been added to the approved witness list. You ought to be there; you’re running this show. I won’t deny you the thrilling climax.”

“I wouldn’t miss it.”

Will stared at him, suddenly drained. Tears quivered at the edges of his vision. He leaned in, his shoulders slouching, defeated.

“Don’t hurt her,” he said. “Do what you want with me. But don’t you dare hurt Alana. Please.”

“I told you, Will. People are going to get hurt if you continue playing foolish games. Your decision to hire Freddie Lounds was a poor one. More behaviour like that could get someone killed.”

Will said nothing. Then he bowed his head. 

“I think we’re done,” he murmured. “Goodbye, Dr Lecter.”

Hannibal’s tone was very grave. “Goodbye, Will.”

Will hung up his phone and stood up. Hannibal watched him being handcuffed and led from the room without looking back, then stood himself. He was deep in thought as he made his way out of the prison, through the dozen security gates designed to keep men like him inside. He was so preoccupied he might have missed Freddie Lounds taking his picture as he left the building, if not for the light glinting off the lens. He lifted a hand in greeting to her, then climbed into his own car and turned back toward Baltimore. 

It would be a long drive. He would have plenty of time to think, and decide upon his next move. Chopin drifted through the speakers, but he wasn’t listening.

Will sat in his cell, staring at the white walls. He would not sleep at all that night.

When they came to collect him in the morning, he was ready. A guard carried his cardboard box of belongings for him as he was shuffled out of the prison in heavy restraints. He had a second to breathe in the fresh air and look at the sky one last time, and then he was being herded into the back of a transport van with blackened windows. 

The journey took about forty minutes. 

It was likely to be the last journey he ever made in his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It occurred to me when I started writing this chapter that I actually had no idea what Hannibal and Will were going to say to one another, after dancing around the issue for so long. I hope what I came up with is satisfactory. I didn't want to put all the cards on the table just yet...


	10. Chapter 10

Leather straps tightening around his wrists, his chest. His nails digging into the wood. 

Tick. Tick. 

He was aware, in an abstract way, that he was dreaming. The knowledge did nothing to ease his terror. 

His nightmares returned him relentlessly to the room he dreaded. The room which was, now, just at the end of the hallway.

Sometimes Abigail was there. Sometimes he was alone, sweating and waiting to die.

The mask over his face sucked in and out as he struggled to breath. The clock overhead counted down the seconds of his life. 

He was not alone. 

“Abigail?” he breathed. 

There was no reply. Whoever it was moved silent as the devil, but he sensed them approaching. 

A waft of fine cologne. 

He began to hyperventilate. 

“H-Hannibal.”

Nothing. Will’s breathing was so fast and laboured, and the straps holding him so tight, he thought he might suffocate. His fingers clawed at the arms of the chair. A nail broke. His fingertips were bleeding. 

A calming hand settled on his chest, over his heart. “Will. Take a deep breath. I’m here to help.”

Skilled fingers quickly unfastened the strap holding the mask in place, and lifted it. Will gasped for breath and screwed his eyes shut, blinded by the sudden light. He felt Hannibal’s hand on his shoulder, solid and comforting. 

He opened his eyes. 

He was at home, in his own clothes, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He could hear the dogs fussing on the porch. Hannibal knelt beside him, his face saddened and concerned.

“Will. When did you last see Abigail?”

“I… I don’t remember. We went to Minnesota. She didn’t come back with me.”

He looked around, disorientated and upset. Through the doorway to the kitchen, he could see the sink.

“I threw up her ear…” he whispered, tears quivering in his eyes. “I didn’t imagine that.”

“Yes. I need you to remember what you did with the rest of her.”

“I…” He cleared his throat, feeling sick. “I hallucinated that I killed her. But it wasn’t real. I know it wasn’t real.”

Hannibal looked away, his face pained. Will put his head in his hands and began to cry.

“Tell me it wasn’t real.”

Hannibal was silent. Will raised his head, shaking violently.

Abigail was standing in front of him, blood running down the side of her neck. Her ear was missing. As he watched, antlers pierced through her chest, dark stains spreading around them. Her eyes wide and frightened, she opened her mouth and coughed a great gout of blood down her chin.

Hannibal was watching from the shadows of the kitchen doorway, his hands clasped sombrely in front of him. 

“I think you killed her, Will,” he said. 

Abigail nodded, crying. Blood poured from her mouth as she opened it to speak. Will didn’t want to hear what she would say, and he covered his ears, but her words rang in his head regardless.

**“He did.”**

Will woke up, breathless and afraid. He did not scream. He was too tired to scream. 

He had been here for a week. His new cell had a wall of bars instead of a solid metal door, so they could keep a close eye on him. The guard at the end of the corridor got up and strolled over to check he was alright, then went back to his chair and his book. Will lay perfectly still, letting his breathing return to normal. He was drenched in sweat.

Slowly, he came back to himself. It was getting harder and harder to do so lately. His head was so muddled. It was difficult to remember which parts of the dream had really happened. 

He hadn’t killed Abigail. That was a bad dream. 

He was almost sure.

Shivering, he sat up and rubbed his eyes, glancing around the narrow space, half expecting her to be there. The holding cell he had been moved into to await his sentence being carried out was not much different from his old one, only a little roomier, a little cleaner. There was one big difference, but he didn’t like to think about that too much. 

He was about fifteen feet from the room he would die in. If a man sneezed loudly in there, he could hear it.

The guards went in and out of there a lot. There was work to be done, the careful preparations involved in legally killing a man. 

They were in there now. He could hear them.

He picked up a book and tried to take his mind off what was coming, but didn’t get far before the lights dimmed and began to flicker. Will looked up, his lip trembling. He knew what it meant. 

They were rehearsing.

Shaking, Will put the book down on the bed, and put his head in his hands.

He had eight days to live.

*

In a comfortable room two hundred miles away, a man was watching the clock as he worked, humming Verdi as he sawed through bone.

*

“How are you feeling?”

Will said nothing. He was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, staring at the linoleum. Alana sat just beyond the reach of the bars on a folding chair. She had made no effort to hide the fact she had been crying. 

“Will?”

Will looked up. Lack of sleep had left him with dark circles beneath his eyes, and his chin was rough with stubble. He sighed and rested his head back against the white-painted bricks, watching her. 

“I’m fine,” he murmured. “Doing about as well as you would imagine.”

“I didn’t mean to…”

“No, I know you didn’t. Sorry. I’m just tired.”

“It’s alright. I just want to keep you company… Take your mind off things. Is there anything you want to talk about?”

He thought about that for a long time, his gaze drifting to take in his surroundings before returning to her face. Alana had noticed over the past six months or so that Will was never in a hurry to answer. He spent twenty-three hours out of his day in a tiny box. What were a few extra seconds?

“The things I want to talk about, you don’t want to hear,” he said, slowly. 

Alana braced herself for another ugly conversation, her expression neutral. “Try me.”

Will raised his eyebrows, wet his lips. “Well. For a start. I want you to promise me you’ll be careful. Around him.”

“And by him you mean Hannibal?”

“Yes.”

“I am as careful around Hannibal as I am around anyone else. He is a colleague and a friend.”

“And a lover.”

Alana did not flinch, even at the vitriol in his tone. “Sometimes, yes. Look. I’ve tried to stand by you through this, Will, but my personal life is none of your concern right now. I’m sorry that I don’t share your misgivings about Hannibal.”

Will’s pale face pulled into a weary smile. “You don’t believe me. But you will.”

“I don’t believe Hannibal is the intelligent psychopath you think he is, no.”

“And you think I am?”

Alana rested her elbows on her knees and put her head in her hands. “No, I don’t think you’re an intelligent psychopath. I never did. I told you what I believed when we were preparing your defence – that you couldn’t be held criminally liable for your actions because you mind was on fire; that you didn’t have any control of what you were doing. I’ve always believed that – I _have_ to believe that. And I believe you’ve fixated on Hannibal as a way to make sense of things you can’t remember doing, and don’t want to remember doing. And I know that you’re scared. I am, too.”

Will was silent. When Alana lifted her head from her hands, she saw he was no longer looking at her, but at the wall clock mounted within view of his cell. 

“Strange thing,” he murmured, rubbing his eyes. “Counting down the days and hours left of your life. Puts a lot of things into perspective.” He met her eye. “I forgive you, Alana. You can… Take that however you want.”

Alana felt fresh tears trickle from the corners of her eyes. Any anger she'd felt over Will's invasive assumptions about her love life faded away. She realised there were a hundred, a thousand things that she wanted to say to him, that she would never have time to say to him again, and her heart ached at the emptiness of it all. She opened her mouth, but none of the words came out, caught as they were in the barb wire snare of her grief. 

Instead, she said the only thing she could think of, wholly inadequate and meaningless. 

"I’m so sorry this is happening to you."

"I know."

"I didn’t want this.”

“I know you didn’t. It's alright, Alana."

“There’s still time. Something might-”

He lifted a hand, gave a weary shake of his head. “Don’t. I’ve got seven days. I don’t think I can bear any more false hope. This _is_ going to happen. I just need to accept that and… Wade into the quiet of the stream.”

He closed his eyes, put his hand over them. 

“Just… Promise me you’ll take care of yourself. Be careful. For me."

“I promise,” Alana said, her voice quivering.

They fell silent. Alana wiped her eyes while Will wasn’t looking.

“This will probably be my last visit,” Alana said finally. The words sounded strange to her own ears, as if she was listening to a recording of herself. She couldn’t really be saying this. It wasn’t real. “Unless you want me to come for the… the…”

Will’s hand was still draped over his eyes, but she could tell that he was crying from the way his jaw was twitching. When he spoke, his voice was so quiet she had to strain to hear. 

“If you want to come with my lawyer for the final visitation… I’d like that.”

“I’ll come.”

“As for the… the thing itself. You’re on the approved list. I understand if you can’t… But I’d like to see a friendly face in the room, before…”

He broke off, swallowing. A tear ran down his cheek and splashed against the linoleum. 

“I’ll be there,” Alana whispered. “I wouldn’t make you do it alone.”

“Thank you.” 

He breathed in deeply through his nose, regaining his composure, then climbed to his feet. Alana noticed how his white jumpsuit hung from his wasted frame. But he was still Will, her Will, with his mess of curls and his wide blue eyes. She stood as he approached the bars and, instinctively, reached for his hand. The guard watching them barked at her to stop, but she wasn’t listening. 

Surprised, Will reached back. Alana took his cold hand and squeezed it. They stayed like that a few seconds, their eyes locked and their hearts in their throats, before the guard banged his club against the bars to make Will let go, which he did with a sullen grimace. But in the brief moment they were connected, Alana understood something she had been denying to herself for months now, and was shocked by how strongly she felt it.

She realised how badly she did not want Will to die. 

Their moment had passed. Will had turned his back to her, his hand curled protectively at his midriff as if he could somehow hold onto her touch. 

Shaken, Alana glanced at the clock. “I… I suppose I should go,” she said, slipping her purse over her shoulder. “I’m sorry this had to be such a flying visit. I’ve got so much work to do this morning. I just… wanted to drop by.”

“It was good to see you.”

“Likewise. Please try to get some sleep, Will. You look awful.”

Will sat down on his bunk and looked up at her with his wide, frightened eyes. “I can’t,” he murmured, a tremor in his voice. “I always see Abigail.”

Alana didn’t know what to say to that.

It was a great relief to get outside. Standing beyond the walls of the death chamber, Alana hunched over and retched. Her knees were weak. She wasn’t sure how she’d manage to stay standing on the night. 

Straightening up, she took her cell phone from her purse and switched it back on. Her heart stopped. She had three missed calls from Jack Crawford, and two from Will’s lawyer. 

Alana sprinted across the parking lot to her car.


	11. Chapter 11

The law firm which Leonard Brauer worked for handled a lot of high-profile criminal cases, but its speciality was death penalty litigation. That was how Alana Bloom had found him, after Will kept firing the FBI’s lawyers, refused a plea bargain from the Office of the Inspector General, and refused to cooperate on his defence strategy; she had feared the worst for him when she sought out Brauer’s firm, and she had been right to. 

It was not where the big money lay – rich people didn’t end up on death row – but several hard-fought wins and one very public overturning of a wrongful conviction just days before the client was scheduled to get the needle had gained the firm notoriety around the country, which was good for business. They’d lost plenty of clients as well, but such was the nature of death penalty litigation. Even the best of lawyers couldn’t do a damn thing to stop the wheels turning when the powers that be were determined to put a man to death.

Brauer was forty-eight and had worked for the firm for nearly twenty years. He’d made partner after eight, earned a modest salary with nice bonuses, and was very comfortable. Having sailed through law school and graduated in the top ten percent of his class, he’d joined the firm despite more lucrative offers because he wanted to fight injustice in a system where errors could be deadly – for the men who did not get a fair trial; the men who’s public defenders fell asleep during witness testimony; and, of course, the holy grail of the young and idealistic lawyer, for the innocents who would, sooner or later, slip through the net. In his younger days he’d teetered on the brink of becoming a zealot, playing fast and loose with ethics, exploiting legal loopholes, fighting with judges, harassing the appellate courts. He craved publicity, and was never happier than when he got to scrape knuckles at trial. 

But after nearly twenty years in the game, and one ugly divorce under his belt leaving him more than a little jaded, that zealous edge had tempered into a sharp but pragmatic enthusiasm. He was as quick-witted and brash as ever, and still considered himself a fierce brawler in the courtroom, but he’d learned to work with the system rather than against it. These days he was able to pick and choose his cases, and usually opted for those which would make the firm money, or at least headlines, and left the grubbier work for the junior associates to sift through. 

Will Graham’s case had stood out to him at once. A string of gruesome murders, the Bureau embarrassed, the defendant claiming unconsciousness during the crime… It could be the trial which made Brauer’s career. But in the back of his mind, he’d known when he first sat down with Graham at the defence table where the whole charade was more than likely to land them both. He hadn’t told the client this of course, but he was a realist, and he’d handled enough of these things to know how they usually went down. Especially with the kind of evidence the prosecution had against Graham. 

No matter how clever he was, or how brilliantly he fought in court, Brauer knew that in all likelihood this would end with him standing in the medicinal-smelling witness room of Virginia’s death chamber, watching his client die. 

He had been there twice before. It did not get any easier. 

That day had felt uncomfortably close when he had stood beside Graham in front of the judge and listened to the sentence being read. But, as he had told the largely unresponsive Graham at the time, there were still the appeals. They could still fight this thing. 

The task of handling a death row prisoner’s appeals is an arduous and often futile one. It is a process which costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, involves enough paperwork to fill a small house, and on average takes around eleven years to reach a conclusion. 

Will Graham’s case had taken less than three. 

Brauer knew exactly why the lengthy appeals process had been so incredibly efficient in this case. Will Graham’s presence on death row was an embarrassment to the federal government. The sooner he was in the ground, the sooner he could be forgotten about and they could move on. This did not bode well for Graham’s final appeals, which would have been long shots at the best of times, and now were barely worth the paper they were printed on. The odds were not in his favour, and there wasn’t a thing Brauer could do about it. Knowing this did not make him feel any better about what was to come. 

He’d visited with his client the day after he’d been moved to the holding cell at the Greensville unit. Graham had been quiet but restless, pacing the small space while the lawyer explained the final stages of the appeals, and what Graham could expect over the coming days. He’d tried to sound confident and hopeful, but he wasn’t sure that Graham had even been listening. 

Brauer wanted to bring in an expert in clinical psychiatry that he had used before. For a hefty fee, the man would speak briefly to Graham to assess his mental state, then very quickly prepare a report stating that the years of solitary confinement had driven the inmate insane. The United States Supreme Court had ruled in 1986 than the insane cannot be executed. If the claim was successful, a stay of execution would have to be granted while the necessary paperwork was filed and a proper judicial hearing could be scheduled to evaluate Graham’s mental competency. That would be months down the road. It was a long shot, but there were very few options left available to them. 

Graham had refused to speak to any experts, and could not be talked around. He had withdrawn into himself, and barely said a word during Brauer’s visit; when he did speak, he simply repeated quietly that he was not insane and did not want to be thought of as such. Then he had lain down on his bunk, closed his eyes, and stopped speaking at all. 

Brauer was frustrated, but he had a backup, and he didn’t need his client’s permission to file it on his behalf. He drafted the petition anyway, citing Dr Bloom’s professional opinion regarding Graham’s deteriorated mental state. It was not ideal, given Dr Bloom’s pre-existing friendship and potential romantic involvement with his client, but it was better than nothing. With seven day’s remaining, the petition was filed with the Court of Appeals. Brauer was still waiting to hear their decision on two other petitions. He expected denials, at which point he would immediately file the same petitions in the federal circuit. If they were all denied, then he was finished; there would be nothing left to file. There was still a chance the Governor would grant a stay, and there were plenty of death penalty abolitionist groups petitioning him to do so, but the chances were slim. The Governor’s stance on capital punishment was well recorded, and he hadn’t granted a stay in years. There was just as much chance that pigs might fly. 

Barring a miracle, Graham was dead in a week. The remaining days would likely be torturous for the client, and manic for the small team of associates, paralegals and secretaries that Brauer had drafted to help with the paperwork involved in fighting on Graham’s behalf. Brauer was already preparing how he would break the news to the man when the last petition was shot down. The brassy impervious veneer he wore in court couldn’t prepare him for this. His mood was foul almost constantly – he snapped at his secretaries, and yelled at one of the junior associates so violently that the man burst into tears. He was drinking more heavily than usual, and his current live-in girlfriend (one of a long string since the divorce) had gone out of town for the week to avoid him, because he was impossible to live with under these circumstances. He was not sure she would be back, and found he didn’t care. He took solace in the arms of a gorgeous young paralegal one night, and hoped to God that bad decision didn’t come back to bite him in the ass further down the line. 

But none of that mattered right now. With the clock ticking for Graham, and no miracles pending, all Brauer could do was hunker down and prepare for a nasty fight to the bitter end. He thought he knew just about what to expect from the coming days, miserable though they may be.

He was not expecting what happened to Judge Davies.

*

Hannibal walked slowly down the aisle of the courtroom, admiring his tableaux. 

Beverly glanced up at him as he approached, Will’s warning ringing in her ears. He caught her looking, and she hurriedly looked away, pretending to be engrossed in what she was doing. Price and Zeller were bickering about something trivial and wanted her opinion, but she was preoccupied. All eyes in the room were fixated on the judge, except hers. Out of the corner of her eye, Beverly was watching Hannibal. 

“Dr Lecter,” Jack said with a nod of greeting as he spotted him. “Thank you for coming. What do you make of this?”

Hannibal examined the corpse thoughtfully for a moment, as if seeing it for the first time. Judge Davies hung suspended from the ceiling by chains, his eyes blindfolded with bandages. The top of his head was missing. A sword hung from the limp fingers of one hand; the other had a flagpole driven through it to hold it up, and from it dangled a set of brass scales, on which balanced the judge’s brain and his heart. 

“Not only is justice blind, it is mindless and heartless,” Hannibal said. He glanced at Jack. “This is the judge who presided over Will’s trial. In this very courtroom. Do you think it possible that someone is making a statement about Will Graham’s conviction?”

“I don’t think we should jump to conclusions,” Jack said, frowning. He had come to this same realisation the moment he set eyes on Judge Davies mutilated corpse, and he hoped to God his instincts were wrong. If this was about Will, they were in for a whole new world of pain. “Judge Davies presided over hundreds of trials, and sent a lot of dangerous men away. He certainly had enemies.”

“It seems like a terrible coincidence that this fate should befall him just seven days before Will Graham is scheduled to be executed,” Hannibal said. 

Jack opened his mouth to respond, but Price beat him to it. 

“There’s something stuffed down his throat.”

They all turned to stare at him. Price seemed unaware of their impatience as he pried open the judge’s jaw and carefully took a photograph. 

“What is it?” Jack said pointedly, as Price shifted his stance slightly to take another picture.

“I think it’s a sheet of paper,” Price murmured, his face very close to the victim’s as he peered down the man’s throat. “Gimme a second.”

Slowly, he drew the paper out with a pair of tweezers. The room held its breath. Price took another picture, then unfolded the single bloodied sheet and smoothed it out on the prosecution’s table for them to see.

“Is that what I think it is?” Zeller said, his mouth hanging open.

“It’s a copy of the death warrant for Will Graham,” Jack confirmed quietly. He turned to Hannibal. “I think it’s safe to say now that you were right. Somebody is sending us a message about Will’s conviction.”

“I only wish they’d sent it sooner,” Leonard Brauer said, striding into the room as if he owned the place and setting his briefcase down on a bench. “Not to make light of a heinous crime, but if this had happened three years ago it would have caused a mistrial. We could have avoided a guilty verdict a little longer at least.”

“Counsellor Brauer,” Jack said. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“The whole building is buzzing with the gossip - it didn't take long to reach me. I just so happened to be in the building already. On account of my being a lawyer.”

“What I meant is that this is an active crime scene. And you knew that. I assume you can find your way out, or an officer will be happy to escort you."

“I won’t touch anything, Agent Crawford. But the clock is ticking for my client, and if there’s any chance this might be cause for a stay of execution, I need to know about it as soon as possible.” He examined the judge, his brow slightly furrowed in distaste, then removed a legal pad from his briefcase, and a pen from his breast pocket. “Shame it had to happen to a good man, but if it saves my client’s life, I’ll kiss the person who did it and buy him a beer. Now. Would you mind filling me in?”

Jack sized Brauer up, then relaxed. He nodded at Bev. 

“The judge was killed in his chambers, then hauled out here for display,” Beverly said. “Time of death looks to be late last night. No signs of a struggle. Mutilation was post-mortem.”

“He was shot in the chest,” Zeller said, gesturing at the bloody stain on the judge’s shirt. “Can’t find the entry wound because he removed the heart.”

“But there’s an exit wound,” Price added. “No slug. Must have took it with him.”

“A trophy,” Hannibal commented. 

Brauer made a note on his pad. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance you think the man who did this also committed the murders my client is accused of? Because that would be just fantastic.”

Jack looked at Hannibal. Hannibal sighed. 

“I feel like St Peter, denying Will a third time. But I don’t think it’s the same killer. There are too many dissimilarities.”

“I suppose that was a longshot,” Brauer muttered, scratching something out. “You’re sure?”

“I agree with Dr Lecter. The cause of death in Will Graham’s victims was mutilation. The judge was shot in the heart.” Jack shook his head, wishing he had some aspirin. “This feels like a repeat of what happened during Will’s trial, to the bailiff. Same cause of death. Similar post-mortem mutilation and display.”

“It seems Will Graham still has an admirer,” Hannibal said. “A fellow killer who paid homage to what he saw as Will’s greatest work in his murder of the bailiff during Will’s trial. And now wishes us to know that he objects to Will’s sentence being carried out.”

“You’re absolutely sure?” Brauer said. In the back of his mind, he was already drafting the appeal which would claim new evidence had surfaced, that Will Graham couldn’t possibly be put to death while the case was still open, that his client was quite possibly if not probably innocent and - 

“Quite sure,” Hannibal said, with another sigh. “When Will saw what had been done to the bailiff, he deemed it blunt reproduction. If you’ll remember, the judge felt the same when he deemed your defence regarding it inadmissible, Mr Brauer.” 

Brauer made a frustrated sound and crossed out another note. “Well, if this is the work of an admirer, then Will Graham could very well know who it is. The crackpots who idolise murderers usually send fan mail, and a guy who’s going to go to this much trouble to send a message will almost certainly have licked an envelope or ten first. Will Graham is your best chance of catching this guy, and it would be pertinent to postpone the execution while your investigation is underway so that you can properly question him about his correspondences.”

Jack raised an eyebrow. He couldn’t really argue with that.

“Will Graham does not read his fan mail,” Hannibal said, quietly. “I hate to undermine what might be Will’s last chance for survival, but Will does not even open mail unless he knows where it came from, such as from myself.”

“He told you this?” Jack asked.

Hannibal shook his head. “He confided in Alana, who in turn confided in me. In Will’s first month on death row, he started receiving upsetting letters. Some fan mail, yes, but he never read past a few lines when he realised the intent. He was also receiving violent hate mail, as well as marriage proposals. It disturbed him, so he ceased opening mail unless he recognised the sender. You can check the prison’s correspondence records, but he has not sent more than a handful of letters himself, and all to people that you would expect.”

“Did he keep any of the letters?” Jack said. 

“No. He was disgusted by them. Will cannot tell you who his admirer is, Jack.”

Beverly cleared her throat. “Well. He’d probably say it was you.”

Hannibal shot her a cold stare, disguised behind a cordial smile. Beverly repressed a shudder. 

“You are very right, Miss Katz. Unfortunately, while I still consider Will Graham my friend and would go far to help him, it had not occurred to me to murder his judge.”

“It occurred to somebody…” Zeller muttered.

A clatter of heels in the hallway caused them all to turn their heads. Alana appeared in the doorway, looking pale and harried. When she caught sight of the judge, she gasped and put a hand over her mouth.

“Is that..?”

Jack nodded. Alana approached them slowly, taking in the gruesome scene. When she spotted the sheet of paper on the table, the blood drained from her face.

“This is about Will, isn’t it?” she said, without needing an answer. She looked between Hannibal and the lawyer, fresh hope dawning on her face. “Can this help him?”

Brauer gave an unhappy frown, weighing up the circumstances. “I mean, there’s a chance. I’ll have a petition prepared by the end of the day claiming that this constitutes new evidence in the case which should be given due time to be processed before anything happens to my client which can’t be reversed. But I wouldn’t hold your breath. The courts hate wild last minute theories, and there’s nothing to directly link this with the case against him. And it could go the other way – if this lunatic is really paying homage to my client, the courts might see postponing the execution as an encouragement of this sort of behaviour. Letting a killer get his way like a spoiled kid in a candy shop won’t look good for them.”

Alana turned to Jack. “Will could help catch him. You know he could. This is what he does.”

“Will Graham’s involvement with the FBI is very much over,” Jack said. “Even if I wanted his opinion, it would be career suicide for me to ask him at this point.”

Alana ran her hand through her hair, deflated. “You’re still going to file the appeal?” she said to Brauer. 

“I am.”

“But you don’t think it’s going to matter?”

Brauer pursed his lips. “Honestly? At this stage, I’m not sure even a signed confession from the real killer – hypothetically speaking – could stop this thing. The courts are certain they’ve got the right man. It was an open and shut case, and nobody on the side of the prosecution lost any sleep over it. The girl’s ear was in his _stomach_. It’s hard to argue with that”

Alana put a hand over her eyes. “Then don’t tell him,” she said. “For God sake, whatever you do, don’t ever tell him. He’s finally starting to accept what’s happening to him. Don’t give him false hope if there isn’t any. It would break his heart.”

There was a long silence. Jack averted his gaze. Hannibal put a hand on Alana’s arm, and felt her trembling.

“I think she’s right,” Brauer said, rubbing his eyes. “What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him.”

Hannibal nodded gravely. With Alana gripping his arm, they left the crime scene to be processed and made their outside. It was a crisp, clear day. On the courthouse steps, Brauer lingered with them for a few minutes to discuss Will’s dwindling final appeals, before excusing himself to draft the new one, his cell phone already planted at his ear. They heard him dictating tasks to his associates as he walked briskly away. He sounded harried, disheartened. 

“Nothing is going to stop this,” Alana said, heavily, as they made their way towards the parking lot, their hands thrust deep in the pockets of their overcoats. “I can feel it.”

“It is looking unlikely. But perhaps it is a blessing in disguise, difficult though that might be for us to accept. Having observed him myself now, I feel another year of solitary confinement might break Will.”

Alana looked up at him. “He doesn’t want to die, Hannibal. He’s terrified.”

Hannibal bowed his head. “I know. You drove to see him this morning? How is he?”

“Not eating. Hardly sleeping. He’s frightened and severely depressed. Can you blame him?” She broke off, sighing. “He, um… He asked me to be there for it.”

“Will you go?”

“I wouldn’t abandon him. Not at the very end.”

“While it is not something I ever wanted to witness, I feel the same way. Seeing the faces of those who love him may calm him, before... We will go together. And when it is over, we will mourn him properly.”

Alana pushed her hair away from her eyes, her lip quivering. “Why is this happening?”

Hannibal did not answer, though he was the one person who could have. 

They had reached the parking lot. Hannibal walked Alana to her own car, and they shared a quick kiss before she climbed inside. He could tell her mind and her heart were elsewhere. He watched her drive away, before turning towards his own vehicle, humming Verdi. 

Killing the judge had felt good, like stretching the muscles after a long period of inertia. He had never intended it to provide the means for Will’s exoneration, merely to grease the wheels a little for if he later decided to make that happen. And to cause a little chaos. He was enjoying watching the fallout.

He wondered if his assurance to Jack that Will did not know his admirer was true. It had always troubled him that he had been unable to discover who killed the bailiff at the trial, and he supposed now he would never know. No matter. One couldn’t have everything.

As he climbed into his car, he was aware of Freddie Lounds taking his picture from the other end of the parking lot with her long-focus lens. The dreadful woman followed him like a hawk these days. That was fine; it was easy enough to shake her when he needed to, as he had the previous night when he followed the judge into his chambers. And he could deal with her if he had to, if she overstepped her boundaries. With pleasure, in fact. 

He was not aware of Bervely Katz watching him from the courthouse steps, partly obscured behind a pillar. She had told Jack, and herself, that she just needed to step out a moment to get some air. She pretended she was not watching Hannibal. But she could not deny the change she’d seen in Dr Lecter’s posture the moment Alana Bloom was out of eyeshot. 

The man had a spring in his step.

Beverly watched Dr Lecter pull out of the parking lot in his sleek black Bentley and drive away. She chewed her lip, and thought about Will. About what he had asked her to do.

As she headed back inside, towards the grisly remains of the judge, she made up her mind. 

She would carry out Will’s final request. On the night of his execution, she would see what she could uncover in Hannibal Lecter’s home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to flesh out Leonard Brauer's character a little bit, because we don't learn much about him on the show. This is my own personal headcanon about the character and some of his backstory. 
> 
> Yes, I am continuing to be a tease about whether Will is going to live or die. I am a bad person. But you'll find out very, very soon... 
> 
> As always, thank you so much for continuing to read, and for your kind comments and words of encouragement.


	12. Chapter 12

After almost three years of waiting, of hurting, the final week seemed to rush by as if impatient for this terrible thing to be over. 

The individual minutes and seconds were still agony, stretched unbearably into hours, made worse by lack of sleep. But one morning Will opened his eyes and had two days to live. 

He couldn’t remember where all the time had gone. It felt squandered, like a leaking faucet only repaired when the tank was about to run dry. The last drops of his life circled the drain.

His lawyer called very early that morning to pass on the grim news that two of his final appeals had just been denied by the Court of Appeals. They had immediately been filed in the federal circuit, but Brauer didn’t sound hopeful. He expressed how sorry he was, and assured Will that they were still fighting with everything they’d got left. With nothing else to say, he simply promised to be there in good time the following day. For the final visitation. 

Will stood with the phone held awkwardly in his cuffed hands, and said very little. He hadn’t expected any good news, not really, but part of him must have been holding onto some residual hope, because the phone call hurt more than he expected. He was very tired. 

When they put him back in his cell, he lay down and tried to read. He had barely slept in a month, and found he could not retain information as far as the end of a sentence, let alone a page. Twice, he forgot what he was reading entirely, and had to check the cover. 

It wasn’t long before his eyes drifted shut. 

When they opened, Georgia Madchen was waiting outside his cell, dressed in the purple hospital gown he’d last seen her in. It looked very bright in the bleakness of this place. Like a butterfly settling on the scaffold of a gallows. Will found himself wistfully happy to see her. She had not visited his dreams before. 

“Will?”

“Hi, Georgia.”

“What are you doing here?”

Will said nothing for a minute, sitting up and wrapping his arms around his knees, rocking slightly. “I don’t know,” he said, finally.

“This is a bad place. Only killers come here.” She paused. “Are you a killer?”

“They think… I think I killed you. Because you saw me kill my doctor. But you didn’t see my face.”

Her dark eyes watched him without anger, or fear. For the dead have no need for such things.

“Is that who you are, Will? A killer?”

“I don’t… I don’t know. I don’t know who I am anymore.”

“Terrible thing,” Georgia said, and when Will looked up, she wasn’t Georgia anymore, but Hannibal. “To have your identity taken from you.”

Will woke with a start to the sound of something tapping against the bars beside his head. He looked up to see one of the guards holding a meal tray. 

“Chow time,” the man said, pushing the tray through the slot in the bars and waiting expectantly for Will to take it.

“I’m not hungry,” Will murmured, closing his eyes again.

“You’ve gotta eat.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Take the tray, Graham, or you’ll be eating it off the floor.”

“I don’t want it.”

The guard sighed, put-upon. “If you don’t take this tray, then I guess you don’t want to go ahead with your visitation this afternoon either.”

Will opened his eyes, frowning. He climbed very slowly to his feet, his face surly, and took the tray. He froze.

“What’s this?”

Alongside the usual mulch of overcooked vegetables and rubbery meat was a folded sheet of paper and a felt tip pen. Will lifted the fold with one finger, as if it might bite. The blood drained from his face.

“It’s a request form for your, uh, your last meal,” the guard said, looking anywhere except at Will. “Just write down what you want and give it back to us, preferably by the end of today. They’ll make you just about anything within reason. Fifty dollar limit.”

Will set the tray down on his desk, his hands shaking. “I don’t want anything.”

“If you don’t write anything down, you’ll just get whatever the kitchen is making that night. You don’t want that.”

Will said nothing, sitting back down on his bunk and pushing his hands through his long hair.

“Just think about it,” the guard said, turning to leave. Then: “And don’t think about doing anything clever with that pen.”

Will wondered, wearily, what they thought he was going to do with a felt tip pen. He supposed, if he was feeling creative, he could find a way to kill himself with it, but what would be the point? That would spoil all the fun. 

He was bored and hungry, and eating would pass the time. With great reluctance, he picked up the tray and carried it over to the bed, settling with it perched on his knees. He picked up the plastic cutlery, and spent several frustrating minutes grinding the meat into edible chunks, before raising a forkful to his lips, his eyes closed. He hesitated, remembering how bad the food always was, somehow both bland and foul-tasting all at once. He wouldn’t have fed it to his dogs.

_“Will,”_ Abigail whispered.

He looked up, startled. Abigail was sitting on the metal stool bolted to the floor beside his desk, their knees almost touching in the narrowness of the space. There was no blood that he could see. She looked as she had looked when he last saw her, beautiful and alive. 

“You need to eat,” Abigail said. “It’s making you weak, and you can’t be weak, Will. You need your strength for what’s to come.”

“It won’t make a difference. They’ll kill me regardless. At least this way, I won’t be able to fight it. I want to fight it…”

“You need your strength,” she repeated. A pause, then she smiled a little. “Just take a bite. Pretend it’s a fish you caught yourself. You made the lure and named it after me. We caught it together. Remember?”

Will smiled back, the first genuine smile he’d managed in some time. He put the food in his mouth and chewed slowly, his nose wrinkling in distaste but his eyes fixed on Abigail.

“That’s good,” Abigail said, nodding. “I need you to do something else now. I need you to remember, Will.”

Will froze. He swallowed, with great difficulty, and took a sip from his plastic cup. “I’m afraid of what I’m going to find if I do.”

If a guard had chosen that moment to look in on him, they would have thought he was talking to himself, or to a ghost. For he was not sleeping. Not now. 

“I might remember what Hannibal did to me,” Will murmured, pushing his food around the tray. A tear ran down his cheek and dropped into his orange juice. “Or I might remember killing you.”

Her voice was very soft. “What difference is it going to make now? They’re going to take you to the room at the end of the hall no matter what.”

A shudder ran through him. “If I remember killing you…”

“I would forgive you.” She smiled her bright little smile. “This is all in your head, dad. You know that. You made a place for me here. I’m safe now. But there’s something else in here too, tucked way down deep… You need to find it. Better to know.”

She leaned forward, and put her hand on his knee. Her touch was light as the wind. Perhaps it was all in his head. It didn’t matter. 

“Eat,” Abigail whispered, tapping the tray with one pale finger. “And try to remember.”

Will nodded. He raised his cup to his lips with trembling fingers, and took a long drink before attempting another forkful of food. The vegetables were so waterlogged her could barely scoop them up. Abigail was watching him, her wide blue eyes full of love. In the back of his mind, he knew she wasn’t there, that he was crazy… He didn’t care. The white room at the end of the hall… The big bad chair… It didn’t matter. Somewhere, Abigail was safe. 

And he would join her soon.

Will speared another chunk of grey meat and tucked it into the side of his cheek to chew. Gristle ground between his teeth, and he retched and – 

His eyes rolled back in his head, a dribble of foamy saliva leaking from the corner of his mouth. 

He was in his small house, sitting at the table. Hannibal was beside him. He felt the man’s gloved hand push the damp hair from his sweat-drenched face, then pull his head back. Something was forced between his teeth.

He tried to struggle, but there was no fight in him. He was doped to the gills, his vision swimming. Hannibal was pushing the tube down. Will felt it going deeper into his throat, and choked compulsively. 

Hannibal stood over him, his face devoid of emotion as he worked. Will convulsed, then fell still, breathing heavily through his nose as the awful probing tube went deeper into him. 

Then Hannibal picked up the ear. 

Will gasped and choked, coughing up the mouthful of meat he had been masticating back onto the tray. He could still feel the rigid thickness of the tube in his throat, the emptiness when Hannibal wrenched it out, the weight of the thing in his stomach…

Through streaming eyes, he looked down at the tray on his knees. 

The ear was there, amongst chunks of gristle and meat. 

He began to hyperventilate. 

The commotion had woken the guard at the end of the hall from his lunchtime snooze. “What’s the matter, inmate?” he barked as he hustled over to check on Will, finding the inmate hunched over his meal tray, gasping and sweating. 

Will looked up at the man with wide eyes, still struggling to regain control of his breathing. He glanced down at the tray, saw only the same inedible mush that they had given him, then up at the desk. Abigail was gone.

“Nothing,” he murmured, bowing his head. “Just not feeling very well.”

“We’ll get the doc to come over if it gets worse. But it won’t postpone it. They all get sick before the end.”

Will glared at him, suddenly exhausted by the callousness of the place. 

“Please take this away. It’s making me sick.”

The guard took the tray, but left the slip of paper and the pen. 

Will closed his eyes and tried to find Abigail, but he had lost her.


	13. Chapter 13

She hadn’t really needed a third session with him – the first two had provided enough material to fill this book and more – but Will had not objected when Freddie requested it. She wanted his unfiltered thoughts in the final hours, but they wouldn’t let her schedule a visitation on the day itself, so she arranged it for the penultimate one. She would see him at two that afternoon, for two hours instead of the usual one – a concession they’d made on account of Will’s relatively good behaviour, and a little flirting on Freddie’s end. 

Will was scheduled to die at a minute past midnight the following night and, according to Freddie’s sources, no delays were expected. 

And she’d be there. Will’s lawyer had called to confirm it earlier that week, sounding displeased with both her and his client. Freddie had rehearsed the night a hundred times in her head. She would watch it happen, and when she stepped out of the death house, she would find a film crew outside the prison to talk to. The execution was high-profile already, not to mention the large vigil that was being planned by some abolitionist group or other for the night, so coverage was guaranteed. She’d shed a few tears for the camera (nothing too dramatic; Will was still a murderer after all, but she could play up the senselessness of the capital punishment system, and cry with a quiet dignity for the waste of human life). Then she’d plug the book. Finally, feigning exhaustion, she’d excuse herself and make the twenty minute drive back to the motel, where she’d bash out a heartrending chapter about the execution itself, and how difficult it had been to witness, how she would carry it with her. The manuscript would be with her agent by dawn. If all went to plan, the book would be on shelves around the same time as the funeral. 

Freddie could smell the money already. She had come a long way from hustling miracle cancer cures on the pages of a supermarket tabloid. Her agent was very optimistic about the size of the advance. Whether or not Will’s prediction about a posthumous exoneration was correct, this book would make Freddie rich.

If it did transpire he was innocent, the book sales would be through the roof. 

She had planned her outfits with great consideration, and they hung in garment bags from the back of her bathroom door, for the motel room she’d rented for the week had no wardrobe. For their last session together, she had decided to wear muted greys, dark lapels on her jacket and her fur-topped boots for a little flair. Tomorrow of course she would be wearing black, a simple shift cinched at the waist with a wide leather belt to show off her figure, black lambskin gloves, heeled ankle boots. Nothing too ostentatious – she wanted to give every impression of mourning – but nothing too grim, either. Stately. 

As she dressed for their final interview, she daydreamed of a movie deal and royalties. 

The drive to the prison was very pleasant. The snow was light for this time of year, the roads quiet. She arrived early and spent a few minutes fixing her hair in the rear view mirror before hustling inside. 

The inmates had creatively nicknamed the Greensville Correctional Center ‘Hellsville’, on account of the presence of the death chamber. It was Freddie’s first visit, and she mentally took notes as she was patted down and given her visitor badge – what the death house looked like, smelled like; how her footsteps echoed in the quiet halls; how many people had died here. 

The warden himself passed through while she was being signed in, a cordial balding man in his early fifties with a thick moustache and a slight paunch. When he heard she was a journalist, he delighted in giving her a quick rundown of the building’s history, its more famous executions, the weirdest last meals the prison kitchen had had to cook. Freddie listened intently and flirted more than a little, and when the warden asked if she’d like a quick tour before her interview, she seized her opportunity.

“That sounds like exactly the kind of first-hand information my readers would be interested in. But only if you have the time, of course – I know how busy you must be.”

She touched his arm as she spoke. Warden Marshall (‘Call me Henry, little lady’) blushed down to his collar. When they shook hands, she’d noticed a tan line on his finger where a wedding ring had been. Lonely men were easy to play. 

“Not too busy at all. In fact, it would be my pleasure,” Henry said. “I can show you the death chamber itself if you wanted to see? We’ve got everything set up and ready to go for tomorrow night. It might put you off your dinner, but then it’s supposed to.”

Freddie’s breath caught in her throat. She couldn’t believe her luck. 

“Would it be possible for me to take a few pictures in there?” she asked, trying to sound timid at the prospect of seeing such a horrible sight. “I wouldn’t disturb anything. But I’d like to give my readers a visual.”

Henry shrugged. “I don’t see why not – there’s nothing secretive about what we do here. I expect a nice mention in the acknowledgements though, if you wouldn’t mind.”

She beamed. “Of course.”

And so, ten minutes later, with her camera retrieved from her car, Freddie found herself standing inside Virginia’s death chamber, staring at the electric chair that Will Graham would die in the following night. At that very moment, he was in his cell with his head in his hands and his mind reeling, about twenty feet from where Freddie now stood. They’d entered through a different door, and the warden had advised her to keep her voice low so the inmate wouldn’t know they were in there. It would only upset him.

The curtains separating the chamber from the adjoining witness rooms were drawn. The straps on the chair lay open. The clock ticked.

“That there is a direct line to the Governor’s office, and the one next to it is for the courts,” Henry was saying as Freddie took pictures. He was pointing at a pair of wall-mounted telephones. “In case of a last minute reprieve, you understand. We check ‘em both before we proceed, but they never ring. By the time the man reaches this room, it’s already too late.”

He spoke with the same affable tone he’d used when describing the building’s history. As if they were discussing the process of a factory production line. 

The chamber smelled antiseptic as a hospital ward, with an underlying note of wood polish. 

“We’re one of only a few states that offers the inmate a choice in the method of their execution,” the warden continued, patting the sturdy arm of the chair. “Of course, most folks these days opt for the lethal injection. This old gal’s got a bad reputation.”

Freddie bit her lip. “Say, would you mind taking my picture standing beside the chair, or perhaps behind it? A little morbid, I know, but it’ll look great on the back cover.”

Henry had no objections. 

Approximately eight minutes after they entered the room, they stepped out and looped back round to reception so that Freddie could drop off her camera along with her cell phone. As she headed into her interview with Will, she was quietly thrilled with the extra material she’d gotten.

She wasn’t expecting to get more, but Will had plenty to say. 

*

Their previous sessions had proceeded very easily, despite any animosity that had lingered between them in the past. Will would talk and Freddie would take notes, interjecting from time to time to ask him to clarify something, or to pose a question. Will always answered as best and as honestly as he could, and she appreciated his frankness. He spoke with slow and thoughtful precision, only ever letting his emotions seep through when he talked about Abigail, and even then only getting a little gruff. He had yet to cry, though she secretly hoped he would. Perhaps today.

They had talked about his memories of childhood. His education. Work history. Sex life. No stone had been left uncovered. It was the definitive account of Will Graham, and no one would ever be able to top it. Not that they’d get the chance. 

All the material she’d gathered so far had been transcribed and edited for the book, but the raw audio files remained on her computer. If that exoneration he predicted ever happened, she’d sell the tapes to add fuel to the fire. Will’s brutal descriptions of his life as an innocent man on death row would play hourly on every news station across the country. 

He spoke very convincingly. Freddie had to admit, at times throughout their discussions, even she was willing to believe he might be telling the truth. 

What he told her that day pushed her over the edge. 

He was standing when she approached his cell, his hands clasped in front and his back straight. He’d always been quiet and a little twitchy in their previous meetings, getting progressively worse as the hour wore on, worse still if she brought up Dr Lecter, but now he seemed calm. Composed. 

“Hello, Freddie. How are you?”

“I’m doing alright, thank you Will,” she said, settling into the folding chair which had been provided for her beyond the reach of the bars and crossing her legs. “Dare I ask how you are?”

Will smiled wanly. He took a seat at his desk, facing her. “I’m alright.”

The tape recorder was running. Her notebook was perched on her lap. 

“Shall we start by talking about tomorrow night? I appreciate that it may be difficult for you to talk about, but I’d like to record your thoughts, if you’re willing.”

“Yes, we can talk about tomorrow night. Then I need to tell you something, and I will expect you to listen without interruption, and to record it exactly as I tell it in the book. It’s vitally important.”

Freddie tilted her head, curious. “Alright…”

“Ask your questions then.”

She glanced at her notes, momentarily rattled by his intensity. She had written, after their previous session, that Will Graham was a man who was fading. Suddenly, he seemed in sharp focus. 

“As we speak, it’s just gone four in the afternoon,” she said, glancing at the clock, though she already knew. “The execution is scheduled to go ahead at one minute past midnight tomorrow night, barring any stays. That’s about thirty-two hours and counting.”

“Yes.”

“Are you nervous?”

He scratched his chin, eyebrows knitted in a frown. “I’m not looking forward to it.”

Freddie wanted to pick and prod around the question, but she sensed Will would not allow himself to be rattled by her today. She moved on.

“Do you believe there’s any hope of a reprieve at this point?”

“Speak to my lawyer.”

“I have. He isn’t fond of me, but he told me there are still a few cards on the table. They’re dwindling, though.”

Will shrugged. 

“Do you think the Governor might grant a stay of execution?”

Another shrug. 

“Who is attending your final visitation tomorrow?”

“My lawyer. And Dr Bloom.”

“Not Dr Lecter?”

“I would prefer to be around friends in my final hours. Dr Lecter is not my friend.”

“But he’s on the approved witness list.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think he will attend the execution?”

“Of course.”

“What about your last meal? Have you decided yet?”

“I don’t want anything. I’ve rather lost my appetite.” A pause, a glance at the blank form he’d left on the desk. “If I change my mind, that information will be made public record after I’m dead. You’ll just have to call the prison.”

Freddie sat back, tapping her pen against her thumb nail. “I get the distinct impression that you don’t want to talk about any of this.”

“Not really, no.”

“Well. What would you like to talk about?”

He was silent for almost a minute. Finally, he said: “I recovered a memory. About what was done to me. About why I’m here. I know how he did it now. More importantly, I know for sure now that I _didn’t_ do it.”

Freddie opened her mouth, and then closed it. 

“I’ve got your attention now,” Will said.

She composed herself, raising an eyebrow. “I’m intrigued, certainly. I’m assuming this relates to your claim of innocence?”

“Yes.”

“Have you told your lawyer?”

“It’s not going to matter. It isn’t evidence, it’s not admissible. It’s just a story. And that’s why you’re here. To tell my story.”

“Okay,” Freddie said, breathlessly. “Tell me.”

She listened in silence as Will related what Dr Lecter had done to him, his brow furrowed in concentration as he tried to remember clearly. Freddie took sparing notes, but her attention was fixed on Will. She had never seen him so sure of himself. The twitchy, unhappy man she’d met years ago, who didn’t like eye contact and was only marginally fonder of conversation – that was not the man she saw before her today. Nor was it the broken wreck of a human being who’d rotted on death row for three years. Less than twenty-four hours before he was scheduled to die, Will was completely, devastatingly calm. 

Freddie already knew what she would write. 

_Will Graham was a man who absolutely did not want to die. He was also a man who was resigned to the miserable truth that nothing he could say or do would stop it from happening. His position was one I would not wish on anyone. But when we met for the final time, Will confided in me that he had recovered the lost memories of what had been done to him by a person he trusted – a person who was tasked with taking care of his mental wellbeing, but instead purposefully drove him out of his mind by concealing and exploiting his illness with a deadly cocktail of hallucinogenic drugs and powerful suggestion. Will told me all of this, with less than thirty-two hours to live, clear in the knowledge that these newly recovered memories would not be enough to save him, and that there was nothing he or I could do about it. And yet he was perfectly calm. For the first time since Will took Abigail to Minnesota and she did not return to him, he had definitive proof in his own mind that he had not killed her, or the others._

_As a journalist, it is my job to look deeper. True, I was aware that Will Graham could be lying, or delusional, or both. But I’m not sure that was the case. When Will Graham went to his death, he did it calmly, and with as much dignity as he could muster, because he finally knew for sure that he was not the monster they thought he was._

_The truth had set him free._

Will talked for the best part of an hour, meticulously going over every detail of how Hannibal had done it. Some of it had been said before, some of it was new. Freddie listened without interruption, and when he was finished, both were drained. A silence settled between them, all words and feelings exhausted. Will was staring at his hands. 

“You really don’t think you’re going to survive this, do you?” Freddie said, after the dust had settled. 

Will shook his head, a slight smile on his lips, joyless. “He’s not going to act until it’s done and can’t be undone. It’s taken three years for this game to come to its conclusion. It would spoil all the fun if he didn’t get to watch me fry at the end of it.”

“Why do you think he killed the judge?”

The look on Will’s face told her the mistake she’d made.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I thought you knew.”

“What happened to the judge?” Will asked, his voice very quiet.

Freddie realised that he hadn’t been told, and that decision had probably been made to spare him more pain. For the first time in a very long time, she felt remorse. 

“It’s not important.”

She couldn’t meet his eyes.

“Just tell me.”

A pause, then she reached into her purse and retrieved a folder of paperwork; inside, she had a colour photo of the crime scene, slipped to her by a source in the local PD. She wanted to pass it through the bars, remembered she wouldn’t be allowed, and held it up for him to see instead.

Will took his time examining the picture. Then he sat back, rubbing his eyes.

“They can’t have found any evidence linking it to the crimes I’m accused of, or I’d have heard about it before now.”

“I don’t think the killer left much evidence of any kind, from what I’ve heard,” Freddie said. “Your lawyer is arguing otherwise, but nobody’s taking him seriously. They think the killer is just an avid fan of yours.”

“He’s just toying with me,” Will said, his hand still over his eyes, his voice breaking. A crack had formed in the calm composure. “He wants me to know that he could do something if he wanted to, but he won’t. He wants me to die knowing that.”

“They, ah… They found a copy of your death warrant at the scene,” Freddie said, feeling as though she was rubbing salt into the man’s wounds at this point, but unable to make it better. “It was forced down the judge’s throat.”

Will nodded, and said nothing.

“I shouldn’t have told you. I’m sorry. I didn’t know you hadn’t been told.”

“It’s fine. Not your fault.”

He straightened up and looked at her. His eyes were red and bleary.

“I appreciate you doing this for me, Freddie,” he said. “We’ve all got out selfish motives of course… But you’ve been good to me. Better than most. Thank you.”

She didn’t know what to say. She nodded.

“Please take care of yourself,” he said. “When you publish this, there’s a good chance he’ll come for you. He threatened as much.”

“I can handle myself.”

“Not against him. You have no idea what he’s capable of. Do you own a gun?”

“Yes, a pistol.”

“Can you use it?”

“Yes.”

“Keep it in your purse. And don’t go near him. Don’t antagonise him. He already considers you rude. Just be careful. Promise me.”

She was shaken. “I promise.”

He stood up and began to pace the small space, his arms folded across his chest. “Well, that’s it then. I don’t know what’s left for us to say to each other.” He pushed his hands through his curls, uttering a shaky laugh. “That’s my last play. Nothing left to do now but wait… and take my seat.”

Freddie felt a tear run down her cheek. It took her by surprise.

For the first time since she muscled her way into this tragedy, she was horrified by the thought of watching the man in front of her die. 

“Are you afraid?” 

He turned to her, pale and shaking, but his head held high. “Terrified.”

“I’ll be close by. Just look for my face.”

“That’s… Oddly comforting. Never thought I’d say that.”

Uncertain, she stood and approached the bars. 

“Can I… I’d like to shake your hand.”

He almost smiled. “You’ll have to check with my handlers first.”

Freddie turned to the guard at the end of the hall, who was watching them over the top of a fat paperback novel. “May I shake this man’s hand? We both know he isn’t going to try to hurt me?”

“Sorry, ma’am, it’s against the rules.”

“Please. He is a friend, and I would like to shake his hand before you put him to death for something that I don’t think he did.”

Will raised an eyebrow, surprised. He had never expected Freddie to come round to his side. But so many friends had become enemies; it only seemed fair that an enemy should become a friend. Still, he was touched.

The guard thought about it a moment, then shrugged. He’d broken the rules for the brunette earlier that week, and no harm had come of it. “As long as you don’t try to slip him something. Make it quick.”

“What could I possibly slip him?” Freddie snapped, then composed herself. She offered her hand. Will reached for it and clasped it. 

“Thank you,” he said. 

“It’s been a pleasure getting to know you. I’m sorry it had to be under these circumstances.”

“It’ll all be over soon. Just please… Treat Abigail fairly. Write whatever you want about me. But don’t hurt her memory. Let her rest in peace.”

“I will,” Freddie breathed, and she meant it.

Will released her hand. Freddie drew in a deep, shuddering breath. Will looked exhausted. With nothing else to say, he just lay down on his bunk and closed his eyes.

Freddie left feeling drained. She was upset in a way she had never predicted, and almost forgot the pick up her camera and cell phone when she left, so lost in her own thoughts. 

Back in the dimly lit motel room, she poured herself a stiff drink and reread an email from her agent to get her head back in gear. It was foolish, she knew, to let herself get suckered in by the stories of a man who the courts had deemed a murderer. And after years of chasing cancer cures, taking full advantage of some of the very worst of life’s misfortunes just to sell a cheap story, exploit some false hope, she was uncertain why the thought of Will Graham’s death was troubling herself so much. 

But deep down she knew. 

Ruthless as she could be – and Freddie could be very ruthless; a woman had to be to get ahead in a man’s world – she realised now that she did not relish the thought of watching a man die right in front of her eyes. Not at all. 

Especially when she suspected Will was telling the truth. 

*

As darkness fell, and Freddie Lounds worked, and Will Graham stared at the clock, Dr Lecter lay beneath the sheets beside Alana Bloom. She had cut their evening short, complaining of feeling drowsy, and they had retired to bed early. Now he stirred, snapping fingers beside her ear to ensure the sleeping pills had taken hold. She was fast asleep. He slipped from the room, and twenty minutes later he was heading towards Virginia. 

When midnight struck, marking the start of what was likely to be the final day of Will Graham’s life, Dr Lecter wiped the blood from his hands, and stepped back to admire his work.

The decision regarding Will’s fate had been too great for him, so here he was, tossing a coin. 

All the evidence they would need to prove Will had not killed those people was right here, practically gift wrapped. Whether or not they found it on time to spare him, on the other hand, was now out of Dr Lecter’s hands. 

He made the drive back to Maryland and slipped into bed again, his absence unnoticed, ready to rise with Alana for what was going to be a very stressful day for a number of people. Dr Lecter was not stressed. He had left nothing short of an orgy of evidence at the scene, demonstrating unequivocally that Will Graham was an innocent man and that the true killer was still very much at large – but nothing that would implicate himself. Whichever way this went down, he would be free to enjoy the media outcry without needing to deflect unwanted suspicion from himself. 

He smiled to himself as he drifted towards sleep.

It was going to be a big day.


	14. Chapter 14

Will Graham dominated the morning news. 

Brauer was on the warpath. He had slept about seven hours out of the previous forty-eight, and knew that Will would had slept even less. The thought of driving to death row that evening to tell the man it was over and watch them strap him to the chair was inconceivable. He simply could not think about it, not when there was still work to be one. 

He still had two decisions pending from the Supreme Court, as well as his two most recent petitions sitting in gridlock with the Court of Appeals – the insanity plea he had drafted with Dr Bloom’s help, and the argument concerning the discovery of new evidence. After three years of almost immediately throwing out anything with Will Graham’s name on it that was handed their way, the Court of Appeals suddenly did not seem to appreciate the extreme urgency of the matter. Brauer expected rejections, of course, but he couldn’t file them with the Supreme Court until the Court of Appeals denied them, and time was running out. It was infuriating. In theory, the state could not execute his client while appeals were pending, but it wouldn’t be the first time that had happened. 

Growing desperate, Brauer held a press conference on the steps of Virginia’s courthouse very early on the morning of Will’s final day, timing it perfectly to coincide with the morning news bulletins. He looked tired and unhappy, dark circles under his eyes barely obscured beneath the smudge of concealer his secretary had applied before he stepped out to speak. But when he did speak, his voice was clear and confident, and filled with passion.

“Thank you for coming out this morning. As you probably know, my client Will Graham is scheduled to die in the electric chair at 12:01 this evening. That’s about…”

He glanced at his watch, though he already knew; the ticking clock in his head would not let him forget.

“About seventeen hours from now,” he continued, gravely. “At this moment he is sitting in a cell which measures about eight feet by ten, waiting to see his loved ones for the final time, and waiting for the state of Virginia to put him to death – a practice which most civilised nations abandoned decades ago. 

“Now my client has claimed his innocence from day one. He was offered a very generous plea bargain which would have spared him the fate he is currently staring in the face, and he turned it down, placing his trust in the system to discover the truth.” 

He paused for emphasis, scanning the crowd. “His trust was misplaced.”

The reporters and gathered crowd were hanging on to every word. Brauer cleared his throat, adjusted his tie slightly. Exhausted and dispirited though he was, the death penalty was his favourite soapbox to preach on, and he could do it in his sleep.

“Whether or not Will Graham committed the crimes he is accused of is considered largely irrelevant at this point in time. It was irrelevant during his trial, though Mr Graham did not think so. What was relevant was whether my client was in sound mind when he committed those terrible crimes. Bear in mind that Mr Graham was sick – he was suffering the effects of undiagnosed viral encephalitis which, combined with his empathy disorder, set his mind on fire. He had confided in his psychiatrist that he was losing time – blacking out, sometimes for hours at a time, and having no recollection of what he had done or said during those periods. He was not in conscious control of his actions. Add to that the fact that he was being pushed to the very brink of his sanity by the work he was doing for the FBI – by Special Agent Jack Crawford’s own admission, I might add, despite the warnings of distinguished mental health professionals… What you have is a perfect storm, ladies and gentlemen, and something very bad happened because of it. But something equally as bad is about to happen if we let the execution of my client go ahead.

“Will Graham does not remember doing what he did. He does not understand what is happening to him, or why. Combined with his already fragile mental state and history of mental illness, the years of solitary confinement he has endured have driven him insane. We do not execute insane people in this country. Such a barbaric practice belongs in the past, and yet my client is still sitting on death row, waiting to be strapped to the electric chair to have three thousand volts sent coursing through his body. I’m sorry if that puts you off your breakfast, but frankly it should.”

He glanced down at his notes, though he knew them back to front. 

“This matter alone should be cause for a stay of execution, but something else happened this week that makes an even greater statement. You may have read that the Honourable Judge Bertrand Davies was killed and his body displayed in this very courthouse I now stand in front of. In the very courtroom, in fact, where he declared my client guilty and sentenced him to death. A photocopy of Will Graham’s death warrant was found inserted into the Judge’s throat. 

“Now, the FBI believe it likely that the person responsible for killing Judge Davies was also responsible for the murder of a court bailiff during my client’s trial. I argued at the time that there was sufficient evidence to suggest that this killer may also have been responsible for the crimes my client was accused of – there were similarities in the mutilation and displaying of the bodies which should not have been ignored. Judge Davies rejected that defence. The terrible fate which befell him is, I believe, very clear evidence that he was wrong in that decision.”

He paused again, letting the implication of his words sink in. A solitary camera flashed, illuminating the tired lines of his face. 

“It seems to me that a crime of this nature, in a manner so similar to the crimes my client is accused of, committed just days before my client is scheduled to die for said crimes, is at the very least cause for a stay of execution. If Will Graham is put to death while potentially exonerating evidence is still awaiting processing in an FBI lab, then a grievous and irreparable miscarriage of justice is going to be taking place. We cannot allow this to happen.

“I believe one of two things to be true. Either Will Graham was not responsible for his actions when he committed those terrible crimes… Or he did not commit them at all, and the real killer is making his presence known once again. 

“We cannot know for sure unless Will Graham is granted a retrial so that all new evidence can be properly examined and taken into consideration. But something needs to be done _now_ , before a mistake is made which cannot be reversed. A man’s life is on the line. If the Supreme Court and the Governor of this state allow this execution to go ahead as scheduled, they may very well be executing an innocent man. They will certainly be executing an insane man. They will also be ignoring the fact that the balances have been tipped against my client from the very beginning – like the fact that the murder of the bailiff at his trial was not seen as suitable cause for a mistrial; that his previous work profiling killers for the FBI has been held up as evidence against him as opposed to what it actually was, a good man trying to save lives; and, most importantly, that his case is an embarrassment to the federal government, who have been steamrolling his appeals process and making it impossible for me to do my job, to protect my client, and that is not constitutional!”

Brauer’s voice had risen almost to a shout as his frustration got the better of him. He took a deep breath through his nose, regaining his composure. 

“I have done everything in my power to stop this execution from going ahead. The fate of my client now lies with the Supreme Court, and the Governor of this state, and I implore them to see sense. All we are asking for is a temporary stay of execution while we sort through these very troubling issues surrounding the case. Refusing a stay at this point is, frankly, reckless and unjust. We are playing with lives. And in seventeen hours, my client is going to pay a terrible price for such recklessness.”

He shrugged, defeated, and pocketed his notes. “That’s all I have to say. Thank you.”

Jack Crawford watched the coverage over his untouched breakfast. He had set up his laptop in Hannibal’s dining room; a perky news anchor had replaced Brauer on screen, rattling off a succinct summary of the case with suitable gravitas, accompanied by photographs of the key players. Jack muted the sound, but winced when he saw his own picture flash up. They cut to footage of Will leaving the courthouse in chains after his trial, looking very small and frightened as he was manhandled into a van and driven away. 

Jack pushed his plate away. He wasn’t hungry.

“You should eat,” Hannibal said, nudging the plate back towards him again with one finger. “It’s going to be a very long day. We’ll need our strength to get through this.”

Jack had arrived just before eight, as they had arranged. Their movements for the day were carefully mapped out. They had planned for this weeks ago, steeling themselves for the worst. But now the day was here, Jack felt completely unprepared. 

Alana was still upstairs. Hannibal had brought breakfast to her on a tray, but he knew it would be untouched when he went to collect her. The sound of her sobbing drifted down the stairs from time to time.

“I worry Alana will not recover from this,” Hannibal said. He sounded so sincere. Jack would remember that afterwards, when he learned the truth. That Hannibal always seemed so genuine… And that he had been so blind. 

“I worry none of us will,” Jack said, pushing his omelette around his plate with his fork, before setting the cutlery aside and sighing.

“I was grateful,” he said, glancing again at the laptop, now showing footage of a protest setting up outside the Governor’s office in Virginia. “When I heard they’d set a date, I thought… Thank god. Maybe then I can put this thing behind me. Put Will behind me.” He looked down at the table, swallowing. “Now I’d give just about anything to just make this stop.”

“We all felt the same way, Jack,” Hannibal said, taking a sip of his coffee. “You can’t beat yourself up about it. Allowing yourself to shoulder the blame is a treacherous path to set out on, both professionally and personally.”

“I abandoned him,” Jack said, glumly. “I pushed him, I broke him, then I left him to suffer the consequences.”

“You testified on Will’s behalf, as did I, as did Alana. We did what we could for him. What is happening to Will Graham is out of our hands.”

“No, his blood is on my hands,” Jack said, before placing his head in them and falling silent. He might have been crying. 

Hannibal watched him for a moment, before cutting a corner off his own omelette and raising his fork to his lips. Upstairs, he heard something shatter. It sounded like a vase. He would have to retrieve Alana soon if she wanted to make it to Virginia by noon – she had been asked to speak at the protest for Will, and was insisting on doing so. Hannibal had promised to drive her there and stand by for moral support. Mostly, he was curious. And when the protesters packed up and headed to the prison for their vigil, Alana would drive to death row with Leonard Brauer, to visit with Will for the final time. They were allowed two hours with him. At eleven-thirty, they would have to leave him to be taken to the chamber. It was a walk he would be forced to make alone.

Jack was driving with Hannibal. They would be at the prison by eleven, ready to comfort Alana and be there for Will when midnight struck and the deed was done. Afterwards, they’d try to avoid the circling vulture that was Freddie Lounds and drive Alana home, where Hannibal would likely give her a mild sedative to help her sleep. He and Jack would have a quiet drink. And after that…

Jack didn’t know. This nightmare with Will had consumed more than three years of his life. He wasn’t entirely sure it would end with Will’s death. 

And, despite all his misgivings about Will, he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted it to end at all. 

He managed to swallow a mouthful of omelette, then pushed the plate away again. 

“I’m not one to pray, but I’d get down on my knees and beg for a miracle right now if I thought it might help,” he said, sighing. 

He could not have known that the miracle was already in motion, two hundred miles away. 

Or that he had just eaten part of it.


	15. Chapter 15

 

At 11:02 that morning, the Supreme Court refused to grant cert for one of the petitions Brauer had filed with them earlier than week.

At 11:07, they refused cert for the other as well.

At 11:58, just as Brauer was cursing the justice system and everyone involved with it, the Court of Appeals denied both of the insanity appeal and the petition claiming new evidence had surfaced. At 12:01, exactly twelve hours before Will was scheduled to die, Brauer filed both claims electronically with the Supreme Court. It was all they had left. If both were rejected, Will Graham was as good as dead.

At 12:08, Brauer called Will to give him the bad news. Will had very little to say.

There was still no word from the Governor. Brauer had called his office not long after speaking to the press that morning, imploring once again that the man grant a thirty day stay of execution while the new evidence in the case was investigated thoroughly. A harried secretary, who was evidently fielding numerous likeminded calls from abolitionist groups and other concerned citizens, told him that the Governor had read all the material about the case that had been sent to him and would make his decision shortly. Brauer doubted very much whether the Governor had read a single word of the thick file that was the summary of Will Graham’s conviction and appeals, and he doubted even more whether the man would be swayed by it even if he did. Brauer had pointed out, vehemently, that it would look very bad for the man come the next election if he allowed an execution to go ahead only for exonerating evidence to come to light shortly after. But nobody really expected such evidence to appear at this point, not even Brauer. Not really.

Brauer had never been exactly sold on Will’s innocence plea throughout the trial; the evidence against him had been a prosecutor’s dream, he knew that. It wasn’t his job to care about things like guilt or innocence – his job was to keep his client out of the chair, and he was now dangerously close to failing miserably in that task. What was worst of all, though, was that with every passing day, he doubted more and more whether his client deserved to be there.

Brauer had already witnessed two executions in his life, and that was two too many.

He’d been twenty-nine years old the first time, not long out of law school, handling the final appeals of some young punk who’d held up a convenience store and, startled by a female employee coming in from the back room, shot and killed the poor woman, who happened to be two months pregnant at the time. It was a dumb fucking thing to do, a senseless tragedy, and Brauer knew that not a day went by when his client didn’t regret it. Even the family of the victim had requested the man be spared the death penalty, but it hadn't changed anything. There’d been plenty wrong with that case, not least of all the fact that a poor black defendant had somehow ended up with an all-white jury and a public defender so incompetent he’d been debarred only two years later, and Brauer still thought about it a lot. _You never forget your first_ , he told the junior associates at the firm, but the truth was you never forget any, not when they ended like that.

Brauer could still close his eyes and remember exactly what it felt like to stand in the witness room of Virginia’s death chamber, watching his client die right in front of him. He could still smell the antiseptic. Still see the final rise and fall of his client’s chest as the drugs took hold and his heart stopped.

He told himself afterwards that he’d never go back there.

It was a promise he worked ferociously to keep, but eight years later, there he’d been again. This time it was a habitual sex offender who’d finally hit the big time and killed someone. Brauer had spent the best part of a decade handling the man’s appeals and had grown to deeply dislike him. But there was no relief in his death. It didn’t solve anything, not for anybody.

Ten years had passed, and Brauer had hoped sincerely that that would be his last visit to Virginia’s death chamber. His hopes had, it seemed, been in vain.

Around one that afternoon, with nothing left to file and nothing to do but watch the clock and wait, he made his way to Richmond, where a loud protest was in full swing in Capital Square, within earshot of the Governor’s office. A platform had been erected in the middle of the crowd, and Alana Bloom had just stepped up to the mike to begin what was going to be a deeply painful and heartfelt speech about her friend, Will Graham, and the inhumane ordeal he’d been subjected to. There were already tears glistening in the corners of her eyes, but she held her head high, the set of her jaw determined.

Brauer made his way to where Dr Lecter was standing behind the speaker’s platform, and the two men acknowledged each other with a curt nod. Both were dressed in dark suits, already mourning. They listened in silence for several minutes as Alana talked about Will, before Dr Lecter broached the question that was weighing heavily on both of their minds.

“Are we assuming the worst?”

Brauer straightened his cuffs, his head bowed. “Still hoping for the best. But yes, assuming the worst.”

“Do you believe Will Graham is really insane?”

A pause. “I believe he is ill. I don’t know if I’d call him insane. He’s cognisant, and still remarkably sharp. He knows what’s happening to him.”

“Do you think the Governor will grant a stay?”

“Not in a million years.”

At the podium, Alana had begun to cry. She made it to the end of the speech she had prepared, thanked the crowd for everything they were doing, and practically fell into Hannibal’s arms once she’d stepped down from the platform.

The director of the group who had organised the protest recognised Brauer and asked if he’d say a few words. The crowd recognised him too, and he was met with loud applause when he took his place at the mike. A sea of placards greeted him, some professionally printed, some painted at home, many bearing the simple missive SAVE WILL GRAHAM. _I’m trying,_ Brauer thought, feeling overwhelmingly tired.

“Thank you for coming out here today,” he said, when the applause died down. “I appreciate it, and I know that my client would really appreciate it if he could see this. I already spoke at length this morning about the injustices involved in this case. I’m sure you’re all well aware, so I won’t waste time repeating myself. The truth is, we don’t have the time. My client doesn’t have the time. Less than twelve hours from now, he will be dead.”

He paused, clearing his throat. Speeches were not something he struggled with often, but nothing of any substance was coming to mind. What was there to say? The battle was almost over; all that was left was to bayonet the wounded.

“Will Graham’s case has been a farce from start to finish,” he said, suddenly angry. “A man’s life has been destroyed. When I first met Will Graham, he was recovering from a serious inflammation of the brain. He was ill-tempered and often unforthcoming, but his friends assure me he was always like that. The truth is, he was getting better. The condition which drove him out of his mind and caused him to lose all memory of what happened after he took Abigail Hobbs to Minnesota – it was finally being treated. Unfortunately, by this point, he was already in custody, accused of five terrible murders that he had no recollection of committing, and was terrified at the prospect of. Will Graham awoke from a bad dream to find himself in a nightmare.

“The human spirit is not equipped to deal with the pressures of solitary confinement. Take a man as fragile as Will Graham already was when he arrived on death row, and it doesn’t take long for him to break. Over the past three years, I have watched my client deteriorate from a healthy, fiercely intelligent individual into an uncommunicative shell of a man. He barely eats. He doesn’t sleep if he can help it. When he does, he is plagued by nightmares so violent he often wakes screaming, at which point he is generally taken to be punished, as if a death sentence was not enough. He is severely depressed and suffers paranoid delusions and hallucinations, amongst other things. What has been done to my client constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. He has been driven insane. Executing him at this point is not only immoral, it is unconstitutional.”

He paused, watching the crowd. He could have heard a pin drop.

“That’s assuming he’s even guilty. Which I do not believe he is.”

He spoke for a few minutes more, laying out Will Graham’s claim of innocence as best he could, carefully sidestepping some of his client’s wilder and less believable theories about his psychiatrist framing him. The applause which erupted when he was finished was deafening. He glanced over his shoulder at the Governor’s office, hoping the man was listening, knowing it was hopeless, then stepped down. The crowd had begun to chant.

It was almost three. Alana insisted on staying a little longer and helping the protesters. Brauer promised to come and collect her in a few hours, then he and Dr Lecter went for lunch that neither felt like eating. He wanted a stiff drink, but he had to drive soon. When this was over, he decided, he would drink himself into a coma.

*

Around the time that Leonard Brauer was making an impassioned speech about his client, the second of the day, Jack Crawford sat in his office at the BAU, thinking about Will Graham.

He had poured himself a stiff measure of scotch, and reached for it now, his hand shaking.

Will’s case file lay open on the desk in front of him. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for. He knew mistakes had not been made in the handling of the evidence, not on his end.

He stared at Will Graham’s mugshot, trying to reconcile the idea that the man he had known and called his friend was a condemned killer, less than ten hours from his execution.

He drained his glass, wincing.

A light knock on the door, and Beverly poked her head inside. “Got a minute?”

Jack gestured her to take a seat, closing Will’s file with the other hand. Beverly’s keen eye did not fail to notice it.

“I’ve been reading it to. Checking I didn’t make a mistake… Wishing I made a mistake.”

“You didn’t make a mistake,” Jack said. “I made a mistake, when I pushed him too far. This is on me.”

Beverly’s silence was blame enough.

“What do you need?” Jack said.

“You’re going to be there tonight, right?”

Jack nodded, dragging his hands down his face. “Yeah. Though I’d give anything not to be.”

“Dr Lecter’s going with you?”

Jack raised an eyebrow. “Yes. Why?”

Beverly paused, wetting her lip. “I don’t know, I’m just thinking… I wish there was something I could do for Will. He was my friend.”

“There’s nothing we can do for Will,” Jack sighed. “Not anymore.”

“Can I leave early tonight, Jack? This whole thing has really rattled me. I can’t stop thinking about it, and I’m going to make mistakes.”

Jack glanced at his watch. “Go now. Price and Zeller can pick up the slack.”

“Thank you.”

She stood and moved towards the door, then turned back to look at him. Her face was pained.

“How did this happen?” she said.

And without waiting for an answer, she left and closed the door behind her.

Jack sat for a moment, mulling over a question which had no answer. Then he poured himself another drink, and picked up the phone.

“Governor Hargrave please. No, I need to speak to him directly. I appreciate that he’s very busy, but this matter cannot wait. Please tell him it’s Special Agent Jack Crawford from the FBI. Yes, it concerns Will Graham. It’s urgent. Yes, I’ll hold.”

He glanced around his office, very aware that the conversation he was about to have would very likely equate to career suicide. People a lot higher up than him would prefer this embarrassment to be over, quickly and with only one, now very disposable, casualty. They would not be pleased to hear that Jack was sticking his neck out to keep Will Graham alive even longer.

Jack found he didn’t care. He felt lighter already.

He sipped his scotch and waited until the phone was picked up again on the other end, and a secretary told him the Governor would speak to him now.

“Hello, Governor. How are today? Good, that’s good. Listen. I don’t want to take up too much of your time, so I’ll just say what I need to say. I’m imploring you to grant clemency to Will Graham. Yes, I know that. I know. Let me explain.”

It took eleven minutes for him to effectively end his end his career. He talked as succinctly and compellingly as he could, knowing it was likely too little and far too late, but feeling better for having done it. When he was finished, there was a long pause on the other end.

“Why are you doing this now, Jack? Just let Graham die and we can all move on with our lives. The longer he sits on death row, the worse it makes your office look, and mine, and everybody else involved in this crap storm. You know he’s been mouthing off to some reporter, right? Apparently there’s going to be a book. I’ve got protesters yelling outside my window, bothering my secretary… This won’t end until he’s in the ground.”

“I’m not asking you to put him back on the streets, Governor, just commute his sentence – he can serve life in a federal penitentiary. Or grant him a stay. Give him thirty days; his lawyer will file enough paperwork to jam the wheels for a couple more years, and we can have this conversation again then. Bury him in the system. He doesn’t need to die.”

“Need I remind you that your team provided the evidence which convicted him? Of five grisly murders, I might add. If I show even a modicum of mercy to an honest to goodness _serial killer_ in the eleventh hour… That won’t look good for me, Jack. I’m running for re-election next year. This would hurt me.”

“Just promise me you’ll consider what I’ve said before you make a decision,” Jack said, but he knew he might as well be tossing coins into a well and making a wish for all the practical good it would do. "He who seeks revenge digs two graves, Governor."

“I’ll think about it, and I’ll make my announcement within the next few hours,” the Governor said. “But you didn’t answer my question. Why are you doing this? It’s not going to do any favours for your career, let me tell you.”

Jack paused, running a hand over his greying head. Early retirement would not be such a bad thing. He might be able to take Bella back to Florence before she got too sick to travel. They might stay. She could die there.

“Will Graham is and will always be my friend,” he said, hoping beyond hope that it was not too late to make amends.

There was a silence from the other end. “Thanks for calling, Agent Crawford,” the Governor said. “I’ll consider your arguments. Goodbye.”

He hung up. Jack placed the receiver down and sipped his scotch. The ache which had been bothering him for weeks now seemed to have eased slightly, though he still hurt very deeply. He didn’t think he would ever be rid of it completely.

He opened a fresh document on his laptop, and began drafting his resignation later.

It was half past three.

*

At 6:02, by a vote of 6-3 the Supreme Court refused to hear the petition which claimed that new relevant evidence had surfaced in Will Graham’s case. They did not think that the death of Judge Davies was anything more than the work of a deranged fanatic, let alone evidence of Graham’s innocence.

Just over thirty minutes later, they denied cert on the insanity petition as well. That vote was unanimous. They did not believe Will Graham was insane.

Brauer threw a stapler across the room when he received the news, then locked himself in his office. He did not want to make the call to death row to tell Will that his appeals were finished. He would have to tell him in person in just a few hours anyway.

There was nothing else to could do except pray the Governor was feeling lenient.

At precisely 8:05, just after the protesters had packed up to drive to the prison, Governor Phil Hargrave greeted several members of the press on the steps of his office to announce his decision. He didn’t need an audience to do it, but with such a high-profile case, it seemed foolish to waste the free publicity. This would be the cornerstone of his re-election campaign, after all.

“Thank you for your patience in this matter. I have spent extensive time reviewing this case, and after taking everything into consideration, it is with a grave heart that I announce I will not be granting clemency for Will Graham. The evidence presented against him at trial was overwhelming, and his claims of innocence and unaccountability are nothing more than the desperate plays of a guilty man trying to escape justice. His case has been reviewed by _five different courts_ , state and federal, dozens of judge. All have confirmed his conviction. Now you may have heard about the recent murder of a highly esteemed judge tied to this case, which Graham’s lawyer is toting as ‘proof’ of his client’s innocence, with absolutely zero physical evidence to support such an outlandish claim. The FBI believes that to be the heinous work of one of Will Graham’s fans, and I think they’re right. It is my hope that the execution of Will Graham will act as a deterrent to any other individuals inspired by his crimes. I would like to close the book on this terrible thing, but before we do, I say this: nobody is above the law, not even those who work in law enforcement, and Will Graham will be punished duly for what he has done. May god have mercy on his soul. Thank you.”

His message delivered, the Governor refused to answer questions and ducked into a waiting car, flanked by his security detail. His advisors were very pleased with his performance. The fact that he had stayed in the office so late before making his announcement could easily be spun to make it look like he’d spent hours agonising over the decision, as opposed to hiding from the protesters gathered outside all day. Polls showed that a majority of his voters were in favour of the death penalty, and admired Governor Hargrave’s no-nonsense stance on it. Will Graham’s execution would look very good for him.

In his comfortable car on his way home to a late dinner, the Governor was thinking about that weekend’s college football game, and about his wife’s homemade lasagne, and Christmas looming just around the corner.

He’d already put Will Graham out of his mind.

*

At 8:14, with a heavy heart, Leonard Brauer picked up Alana and started out on the hour-long drive to Jarratt to attend Will’s final visitation. Alana was in pieces, and Brauer knew that she was trying to get the worst of it out before she saw Will. The last thing she wanted to do was upset him more than he undoubtedly already was. In truth, Brauer was having trouble keeping it together himself.

At 8:32, Jack and Hannibal set out in Hannibal’s car for the same destination, both quiet and contemplative and, in Jack’s case at least, bleary-eyed.

*

At 8:35, the second body was found.


	16. Chapter 16

Marion Vega had done very well off the back of the Graham verdict.

It had not been a particularly difficult case to win, not with that much evidence. In fact, _Graham v. Virginia_ had almost become shorthand around the courthouse for an easy verdict – _that trial was over quick, did he have an ear in his stomach or something?_ But it had been a big case with plenty of media coverage, and she felt certain that that victory had helped secure her another term as district attorney. With the execution looming, she was feeling good about how everything had played out, and while she didn’t exactly relish the idea of watching it happen, she planned to be in attendance to see justice in action. She certainly wouldn’t lose sleep over it. 

The courtroom which Judge Davies had presided over had not been in use since the discovery of his body earlier that week. But the crime scene cleaners had been in, the police tape removed, and on the evening of Will Graham’s execution, the janitor decided it was time to give the place his once-over before it was reopened for use. Mostly, his curiosity had gotten the better of him. 

The courthouse had been closed since five. A few clerks were still puttering away upstairs, but the place was quiet. The janitor retrieved the key and let himself inside, dragging the heavy floor polisher behind him.

He crossed the threshold, then froze.

A woman was sitting at the prosecution’s table, facing the witness stand. She was dressed in a smart black pantsuit, light brown curls spilling down her back. 

“Ma’am?” the janitor called, leaving the floor polisher at the door as he approached the bar. “The courthouse is closed. You shouldn’t be here.”

The woman did not move or acknowledge him in any way. The janitor’s feet faltered as unease settled over him. He had the distinct feeling of being somewhere he shouldn’t. 

“Ma’am? Are you alright?”

He was right behind her now. She still had not moved. With leaden feet, the janitor rounded the table to look at her face. 

He began to scream.

*

Will woke from an uneasy doze to find Abigail sitting beside him on the bunk.

For a second, he indulged his bruised and broken mind in the hope that he was at home, and the past three years had been nothing more than a terrible nightmare. He was home, and Abigail was visiting… He was home, and he was not going to die, not now, not like this…

But his home was gone, and death was waiting the room at the end of the corridor, only hours away now. 

He looked up at Abigail, and the urge to scream receded a little. 

“It’s going to be okay,” she whispered, as he crawled into a sitting position beside her, shoulder to shoulder. Her pale fingers slipped around his own, intangible as a dream. “It’ll all be over soon.”

Will smiled faintly at the white wall opposite him, and said nothing.

He had been placed under twenty-four hour ‘death watch’ at midnight the previous night, and was being observed constantly. The guard sitting outside his cell noticed Will’s wistful smile, and glanced away, troubled. Just about every condemned man who came through there played the insanity card at some point or other, but Graham was the first one he’d seen for whom it did not appear to be an act. 

Not that the guard thought it would save him. Not this late in the day. 

At 9:00 exactly, their movements carefully rehearsed and efficient, four guards approached his cell carrying a towel and a shaving kit. Will looked up as he heard them approaching, feeling Abigail’s hand squeeze his a little tighter. They were big guys, thick in the chest and arms, more than a match for a smaller man like himself. He supposed some people in his position tried to fight, or run. He wondered where they found the energy.

“We need to shave your head,” one of the men said. “For the electricity. Once we’ve got that out of the way, your final visitation can take place. Your lawyer called ahead to say he’s on his way; he’ll be here in about a half hour. And if you change your mind about a last meal, we can have something brought to you.” 

“I won’t change my mind,” Will murmured. 

“Are you going to behave?”

Will looked up at the man, intensely weary. He ran his hands through his hair for the final time, trying to stop them from shaking. He glanced at Abigail, saw her smile and touch his arm, and nodded. 

“I’ll behave.”

They unlocked his cell and put him in cuffs and leg irons. Two stood watch outside while the others crammed into the narrow space. His curls were so thick that they started with a set of hair clippers. Will watched his dark locks drop onto the towel with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, heavy as a stone. 

Amused, one of the guards murmured that he wasn’t so handsome now, was he? Will kept his eyes down, and did not respond.

As he felt the scrape of the razor across his skull, he looked to Abigail. She stood behind one of the men, a bright presence in such a dark place, like sunlight falling through a crack in the wall of a charnel house. She held his eye, and he felt calmer for it.

They nicked him once, just above the ear. Will flinched, feeling a bead of blood run down the side of his neck before a clean towel was pressed against the wound.

“Don’t worry; that’ll be the least of your problems soon,” the guard shaving him said. “Bet you wish you’d opted for the needle now, huh pretty boy?”

Will did not reply.

When he was completely bald, they removed his restraints and left him mostly alone, one guard sitting back down on the folding chair outside the bars to resume the watch.

Will ran both hands over his smooth head, breathing deeply through his nose. Abigail settled beside him again, and touched him arm. The bed did not dip beneath her weight. He knew she was not really there.

“It’s going to be okay,” she said again, resting her head against his shoulder. “A few more hours… Then you can sleep.”

“Will you stay?” Will murmured. “I don’t know if I can do this alone.”

The guard beyond the bars looked up at the sound of Will’s voice, startled and uneasy. It was a rare occurrence to hear Will talk. The prisoner was staring at the empty space beside him on the bed, talking to himself. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Abigail said, nestling against him. He could feel her soft hair tickling his neck. “And I’ll be waiting for you, in the place you’ll find after.” She sighed, the rattling whisper of the dead, her cold fingers stroking his arm. “You just have to be brave a little longer.”

Will felt a tear fall from his eyes, and screwed them shut. If he started that business, he was terrified he would be unable to stop.

“I love you,” he whispered, his voice and his heart breaking.

“I know, dad,” Abigail said. “I love you too.”

*

Jack Crawford’s phone rang at 8:46, just as he and Hannibal were turning onto the freeway. 

The local PD had taken one look at the scene and called the feds. When Jack heard who the victim was, he got Zeller on the phone and barked at him to find Price and get to the courthouse immediately. In the first stroke of luck Will had had in three years, both men were still at the lab, working late while waiting for news. They promised to phone him an update as soon as humanly possible. Jack tried phoning Beverly as well, but her phone was off. 

“Should we turn back?” he asked Hannibal. 

“What good would your presence serve at the crime scene, Jack?” Hannibal said. “Your team are more than capable. If this is, as it sounds like, another offering from Will Graham’s avid fan, it will not postpone the execution. The courts and the Governor have already announced where they stand on this matter. What is important now is being there for Will when he needs us the most.”

Jack tried Beverly’s phone again, to no avail. 

Price and Zeller arrived at the courthouse at 9:04, just as Will Graham’s curls were falling into his lap. What they found was Marion Vega, sitting upright at the prosecution’s table, in the same seat she’d sat in when Will was sentenced to death. Her hands, palms up, were nailed to the table, smeared in blood right up to the wrists. 

Her tongue had been removed entirely, and was nailed to the wood between her hands, atop the blood-drenched pages of a trial transcript marked _Graham v. Virginia._

Her heart, ripped from her chest, was nowhere to be seen.

“She’s been dead less than twenty-four hours. Looks like all mutilation was done prior to death,” Zeller related to Jack, his cell phone caught between his ear and shoulder as he examined the body. “Her feet are nailed to the floor and there’s a tight strap holding her upright. She couldn’t move from the chair. I think he ripped her tongue out, then removed the heart while she was still choking on her own blood. The heart’s gone.”

In the car on the way to the prison, Jack had put them on speakerphone so that Hannibal could listen in. 

“Her tongue’s nailed to the table, over documents from the trial,” Zeller said.

“Because she told lies,” Hannibal submitted, quietly. 

Jack put his head in his hands. “Listen, I know you haven’t had much time to examine the body, but is there anything there that could support a defence of Will Graham in this moment?”

A tense silence from the other end. 

“Other than the mutilation being done while she was still alive, I don’t think so,” Price said. “It looks like the work of the same person who axed the judge and the bailiff.”

Jack said nothing for a moment, his heart heavy. “Keep working. I don’t care what plans you had for tonight – you don’t leave that crime scene until you’re certain there’s nothing there that will help Will; and even then, take a second look. Got it?” 

“Got it boss,” Zeller said. “I’ll send some pictures over too.”

They hung up, and Jack immediately phoned Brauer, who fumbled to put his cell on speakerphone as he was driving.

“Agent Crawford, what is it?”

“The district attorney has just been found dead in the same courtroom as Judge Davies. She was mutilated prior to death, but my guys say the displaying of the body looks to be the work of Will’s fan again. We think she was killed last night.”

“ _Christ,_ why couldn’t this have been discovered hours ago?” Brauer snapped, almost veering into oncoming traffic in his frustration. 

“The courtroom hasn’t been in use. A janitor found her by chance, or she could have sat there for days.”

“It’s probably too late,” Brauer seethed, staring hard at the glowing display of the clock on the dashboard. It was 9:16, and they were sitting in traffic, almost at the prison. “I’ll see who I can get on the phone. Please tell me you’ve got something I can use, because I’m grasping at straws here Jack!”

“My guys are combing the scene. I’ll call as soon as I hear anything.”

They hung up, and Brauer tossed his phone to Alana, asking her to dial for him while he drove. His first call was to the Governor’s office, but he knew the Governor would not be there, not this time of night. He managed to reach one of the Governor’s advisors, hunkering down at the office until news of the execution reached them, and rattled off the new information with desperate abandon, begging the man to call the Governor at home and have him phone the prison directly to order a stay. The advisor rolled his eyes and said the D.A.’s death was a tragedy, but it proved nothing about Will Graham’s guilt or innocence. The justice system could not be hijacked by some lunatic fanatic paying homage to a condemned serial killer. Besides, the Governor had already made his decision, and didn’t want to look like he was flip-flopping. Brauer lost his temper then, and screamed at the man until he hung up and wouldn’t answer a call from that number again.

Brauer’s team was still at the office, awaiting news. Trying to calm himself, he called and told them what little he knew, asking them to get on the phone to anyone and everyone who might possibly be able to help. Pester the attorney general’s office. Wake up any judge who’d looked at the case. Exaggerate if they had to. Call Amnesty, call the news networks; make sure they all knew that Virginia was about to execute a man while potential evidence was yet to be processed. 

He wasted no time in calling the Court of Appeals himself. The Court closed at five, but a clerk was required to stay late on nights when executions were scheduled to take place. The phone rang and rang, and when it was eventually answered and Brauer relayed the situation, the clerk asked if he had anything to file. Brauer snapped that he couldn’t possibly have anything ready to file because the new evidence had only been discovered minutes before. The clerk sounded unimpressed. He said the new evidence theory sounded an awful lot like the petition the court had heard earlier that week, and had denied, and Brauer had to repeat himself three times that a new body had been found before getting through to the man. The clerk said he’d make some calls, but he didn’t seem particularly enthused or sympathetic.

Brauer was energised by the turn of events, but he knew in his heart that nothing was likely to come of it. It was too late in the day – anyone who could stop this thing had already made up their mind and gone home, and they weren’t going to be impressed by such a frantic and flimsy eleventh hour appeal, so similar to the one they’d just tossed out of court. But it was a chance, more of one than they’d had an hour ago, and he was not prepared to stop fighting until Will was taken to the morgue. Perhaps not even then.

They pulled into the parking lot at the prison at 9:45. They were now fifteen minutes late for Will’s final visitation. The frantic phone calls had taken Alana’s mind off what was to come for a short while, but it hit her hard as Brauer hung up and smacked his hand off the steering wheel, before pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes and groaning, a guttural and worn out sound. 

“They can’t possibly go ahead with it, can they?” Alana whispered, fearing she already knew the answer. She was white as a sheet. “The crime scene’s not even cold yet… They can’t possibly kill him while there might be evidence just _sitting_ there.”

Brauer had not lowered his hands from his face. She thought he was trying not to cry.

“They’ve killed men before who still had decisions pending from the Supreme Court. They’ve killed men who were convicted on nothing more than phony eye witness testimony and junk science – men who didn’t get a fair trial, who didn’t have competent representation, who half the world thought were innocent… The list goes on and on and on. This is nothing new. And if they kill him and a day, a week, a month from now we prove he’s innocent… It won’t change anything. They’ll toss blame back and forth and some people will lose their jobs, but it won’t stick to anyone in particular. And when the dust settles they might promise to re-evaluate the system, but nothing will be done. Nobody cares, Dr Bloom. Men like Will Graham… Nobody cares what happens them. We’ll just keep killing and killing, and sure some innocent men will get killed along the way, but it won’t stop, it won’t ever fucking stop…”

He trailed off, the fight leaving him, and dragged his hands down his face. His eyes were wet.

“We should go in,” he said, hollowly. “He shouldn’t be alone right now.”

“Do we tell him?”

Brauer didn’t answer for a long time. “No,” he said, finally, wiping at his eyes with the sleeve of his suit jacket. “Not if it comes to nothing. It would eat him alive.”

They stepped out of the car, shivering against the cold winter air, and headed towards the building where Will Graham would die. 

It was 9:52.


	17. Chapter 17

 17: _This shouldn't be happening..._

***

 

 

“Graham? Your lawyer is here.”

Will lifted his head from his hands and straightened up. He had been moved to the visitation cell, a tiny cell which neighboured his own, with nothing but a toilet in the corner and two metal benches facing each other. Brauer and Alana were standing outside.

Alana gasped when she saw Will’s smooth, shaven head, clamping a hand over her mouth as she tried to stifle the sound far too late. Will managed a wan smile, running a hand over his scalp.

“It’s not a good look for me, is it?”

He stood as the two entered the cell with him, and offered his hand to his lawyer. Brauer shook it, firmly, then pulled him into a tight embrace, murmuring apologies for being so late. When he was a free man, a lifetime ago it seemed now, Will had never been fond of such contact. But three years of handcuffs and solitary confinement had made him long for it, and he held his lawyer tight, comforted by his presence.

Alana hugged him next, a long and tearful hug without words that neither wanted to come to an end. When she eventually pulled away, Will’s shoulder was damp with her tears. He swallowed hard, trying to hold back his own.

They sat down, Alana and Brauer side by side on one bench, Will opposite them on the other. In the cramped space, their knees brushed when they leaned forward.

“The appeals?” Will said, without much hope.

“They denied us,” Brauer murmured, looking at his hands. “The Governor refused to grant clemency. There’s nothing left. I’m sorry.”

Will nodded. He had expected as much, though Brauer could tell from the look on his face that a small part of him, deep down, had never truly believed it would come to this. He’d seen it before. There was a raw and terrible shock in Will’s eyes that was agonising to see.

It was never quite real until they took you to the chamber and tightened the belts.

“I did everything I could,” Brauer said.

“I know you did. Thank you. I appreciate you fighting so hard for a murderer like me…”

Will trailed off, chuckling bitterly, without humour.

Brauer was silent a moment. “Look me in the eyes and tell me again that you didn’t do it.”

Will met his eye, his gaze unwavering. “I didn’t do it. I thought I might have. But I know the truth now.”

Brauer watched him a moment longer, then nodded. “I believe you. I’m sorry that I didn’t before. It didn’t stop me from doing the best I possibly could, but my best just wasn’t good enough. But I’ll keep fighting this, you hear me? I’m not going to let it go. I’m not going to let anyone forget.”

“You might have some help. Over the next few days… You’ll see. You’ll see.”

Alana had yet to say a word, but she looked up then. “Will? What have you done?”

“Nothing you need to worry about just now,” Will murmured. He hoped that Beverly would fulfil her promise. He wouldn’t be there to see it, and it wasn’t going to make things any better, not for anyone involved. But if Hannibal was arrested, at least Alana would be safe. That was all that mattered to him anymore.

Brauer’s phone began to vibrate in his pocket. He knew he wasn’t allowed to take calls in the building, quickly excusing himself and jogging down the corridor.

“Will?” Alana said, as Brauer stepped out. “Please tell me what you’ve done.”

Will chewed his lip. “Can we talk about something else? I don’t have very long.”

Alana wanted to keep questioning, but she knew she wouldn’t get an answer from him if he didn’t want to tell it. “What… What do you want to talk about?”

“How’s Winston?”

She managed a tearful smile. “Winston’s fine. He misses you. He doesn’t run away anymore… Not since the new couple moved into your house… But he whines when he hears your name.”

Will smiled back. “Will you keep him? After I’m gone, I mean.”

“Of course I will.”

Will nodded. He ran his hands over his head again, still not used to his baldness, and broached a topic he’d been avoiding for weeks now. Part of him had believed he’d never have to.

“Alana, I… I don’t quite know how to ask this. Could you, um… Could you handle what happens to my body? Afterwards.”

Alana opened her mouth, but no words came out.

“There should be enough money left from selling the house to pay for a cheap coffin and a plot,” Will continued, staring hard at the floor. “Or, uh, cremation is fine. You can have a service if you want, it doesn’t matter… I’m sorry to make you do this, after everything else you’ve done. But if nobody claims my body from the morgue, they’ll just bury me in the prison graveyard.” Two tears snaked down his trembling face, his barricades collapsing. “Don’t let then put me there. Please don’t let them.”

“Of course not,” Alana managed, reaching over to grip Will’s knee. “I would never let them do that. You’re not… You’re not a criminal, Will. You don’t belong there… This shouldn’t be happening…”

She began to weep then, great hitching sobs that she couldn’t stop. Will took her hand and held it, tears leaking silently down his own cheeks. He murmured comforting words, not knowing if he was talking to her, or to himself, or making any sense at all.

Brauer leaned against the wall outside the death house, breathing in the cold night air as he pressed his phone to his ear.

The sleep-deprived junior associate who was handling things from the office broke the bad news. Nobody would listen to the plea for relief. The justices who were still awake had called it drivel and told them not to call again. The Governor had apparently been informed by his advisor, and wasn’t budging. They’d begged for thirty days – _just thirty fucking days, for Christ’s sake_ the associate cried – to have Marion Vega’s death properly investigated and rule out the possibility that the same killer was behind both it and Graham’s supposed crimes, but nobody believed that to be the case, nobody believed it relevant. Everybody, it seemed, had already pronounced Will dead in their minds and moved on.

Brauer threw his cell phone at a wall and screamed.

Breathing heavily, he swallowed down his anger – at the appellate courts, the Governor, the entire goddamn justice system; and himself for not being better, cleverer, quicker – and made himself go back inside.

Warden Marshall was waiting in the corridor beyond the cells. Brauer murmured to him that there was nothing left, and Marshall acknowledged this with a sombre nod as Brauer headed back to the holding cell, to Alana and to Will.

He found them sitting side by side, Will’s face pressed against Alana’s shoulder as he wept and she stroked his smooth shaven head, her own face streaked with mascara tears.

Brauer looked at the clock, the phantom ticking in his head becoming deafening now.

It was 10:49. In just over an hour, Will Graham would be dead.

*

In a small office nearby, Jack Crawford and Hannibal Lecter sat in silence, waiting to be called to the witness room.

Jack was replaying a conversation in his head, when Will had told him – no, _begged_ him – not to keep him in the field. His lip trembled. His resignation letter, written and signed earlier that day, lay on his desk waiting to be handed in the following morning. It was the only fitting thing to do, and Jack felt no self-pity in that knowledge, only horror at what he had done.

Hannibal’s face was grave, but he was perfectly calm. The body of the district attorney had been found, but it was too late for Will. Midnight was fast approaching. He doubted they would find what they needed to save him until an autopsy was performed, and that wouldn’t be done until morning at the earliest.

Dr Lecter was not troubled. He had known this was a possibility. It had made the game more interesting.

Shame that Will had to die, but one couldn’t have everything.

*

“We’ve been here for almost two hours,” Zeller grumbled, leaning against the defence table and yawning. “I don’t know what Jack expects us to find. The guy did it, end of story. And now he’s paying for it.”

Price sighed. He’d never shared Zeller’s intense dislike of Will and wasn’t quite as comfortable with the idea of a man he’d worked with dying in such an undignified manner. “I still can’t believe tonight is the night they’re actually going to do… it.”

“You saw what he did,” Zeller said, his arms folded across his chest. “Guy deserves to fry.”

“Hmmm,” Price said, noncommittally.

“Let’s release the body to the coroner, stick it in the van, and go get a drink. There’s nothing here to find, and it’s not like we have time to run any tests! We’ll finish processing the body in the morning, when we’ve had some fucking sleep.”

Price straightened up from where he’d been hunched, and cracked his neck. “Maybe you’re right,” he said, glancing at the deeply unnerving sight of Marion Vega’s face, her eyes wide and full of terror, mouth hanging open, gapingly empty without its tongue. “There’s nothing-”

He froze, and leaned in closer, fumbling for his torch.

“What?” Zeller said, his interest peaked.

“I think… Oh god,” Price said. He staggered back a step. “I can’t believe we didn’t see it. It’s been right in front of us the whole time.”

“What?!”

Price looked over his shoulder at his partner, the colour draining from his face. “There’s a wire tied to her uvula. There’s something hanging down her throat.”

Zeller pushed him aside to take a look. Sure enough, his torch illuminated a strand of wire coiled expertly around Marion Vega’s uvula, disappearing down her open throat. The wire was clear and so thin that it had it been easy to miss. But now that he saw it, he couldn’t believe he’d missed it before.

“We were so busy looking at wasn’t there that we didn’t notice what was,” Price said, his words garbled as he rushed to get them out. “He ripped her tongue out to gain easy access to her throat.”

“Pull it out,” Zeller said, his voice hoarse. Like Price, he was suddenly white as a sheet.

“We can’t just-”

“Just pull it out!” Zeller yelled, and before Price could pull himself together to do so, Zeller reached into the victims mouth himself, hooked the wire around two fingers, and pulled.

“Oh my god,” Price breathed, when they saw what the wire was attached to.

Hanging down Marion Vega’s throat was a line of fishing fire attached to a skilfully handcrafted lure. The tip of the fly hook had caught in her stomach lining and tugged a substantial quantity out with it when Zeller pulled, spilling blood and wet pink flesh across the table, spattering his face.

Woven amongst the monofilament, coiled around the feathers, was organic material. Hair. Veining. A fragment of tooth. Of bone.

It would not have been obvious to many people unless pointed out. But Price and Zeller had seen it before.

And, hanging from the hook itself, a small, undoubtedly female pinkie finger.

Marion Vega was in possession of all her digits. It had not come from her.

A moment of stunned silence. Zeller’s ashen face was wet with blood, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Somebody tied this fly with bits of people,” he said, his voice shaking as realisation hit hard. “Just like…”

“Just like Will Graham allegedly did,” Price confirmed, looking up at his partner in horrified disbelief. “This looks almost identical to the ones we found in his home. How much do you want to bet that organic material belongs to his supposed victims?”

“And that finger… That couldn’t possibly belong to who I think it might, could it?”

“It’s the right size,” Price said. “It looks like it came from a…”

“From a teenage girl,” Zeller finished, feeling sick. “It’s hers, isn’t it? It’s Abigail Hobbs’. A gift from the real killer.”

Both men looked down at their watches.

“Call Jack,” Zeller rasped, breathless. “Call Will’s lawyer. Call anyone. We have to stop this.”

It was 11:06.

*

Leonard Brauer’s cell phone lay in several pieces outside the death chamber, shattered beyond repair.

Jack Crawford’s phone was in his pocket.

It was switched off.


	18. Chapter 18

Around 11:09, Alana stepped out to get some air. She tried to make it outside, failed, and threw up in a corridor instead.

Brauer sat opposite Will in the visitation cell, both leaning forward on their elbows. Their foreheads were inches apart. Their knees touched.

Will had stopped crying for the time being. His face was whiter than his jumpsuit, dark circles under his red-rimmed eyes. He had thrown up, once, almost a dry heave; there was nothing more than bile in his stomach. He couldn’t stop touching his bald head, uncomfortable and upset by it. But he was handling things about as well as could be expected in his situation. Better than could be expected, really. 

Brauer had seen men far guiltier than Will suffer through this final hour with far less dignity. Despite the deep hurt in his heart, he was proud of his client. 

“Have you been here before?” Will asked. 

Brauer nodded. “Twice. Too many times.”

"Were they at least guilty?"

"Yeah, they were."

"Did that make it any easier?"

Brauer sighed, and rubbed his eyes. "Not really. But they didn't make me want to throw in the towel afterwards, put it that way. I don't know if I can do this again, after... After this one. Right now I just want to move somewhere where they don't have the death penalty, maybe open my own practice, take on harmless cases like will probates and misdemeanors. None of this life or death shit. Or maybe abandon law altogether and just start, I don't fucking know, painting houses or some shit."

Will chuckled. "If it were me, if I could put this all behind me and walk out of here... I'd find a stretch of beach that looked nice. Buy a ramshackle little house near the sea. Maybe go back to fixing boat motors. Waste my days drinking and lounging in the sun. That sounds like Heaven right about now."

There was a silence. The faint smile slipped from Will's face.

“Have you seen it done with the – the electric chair before?” he said. 

“No. They both opted for the needle. Most people do, given the choice.”

“I couldn’t do it that way. Needles got me into this mess… He was drugging me, making me lose time… Forcing her ear down my-my throat…”

A fresh tear rolled down his cheek. Will wiped it away quickly with the heel of his hand, taking a shaky breath.

“How bad is this going to be for Alana to watch?” 

Brauer didn’t answer at first, not sure how much Will actually wanted to hear. He hadn’t seen first-hand it being done this way before, but he’d heard stories from other lawyers. He knew what to expect.

“You’ll be strapped down tightly, but you’ll still buck and strain against the restraints when the electricity starts flowing,” he said, quietly. “There’ll be a bit of smoke. Your nose may, ah, well it may bleed. You’ll be wearing a mask, though, so she won’t… She won’t see your face.”

“She won’t be able to… to…” Will broke off, swallowing hard, and moved to push his fingers through his hair before remembering his hair was gone. His hands dropped back onto his knees, shaking violently. “She won’t be able to smell it, will she?”

Brauer shook his head, though he wasn’t sure it was the truth. He’d heard it told both ways. If the death chamber was sealed off tight, the sickly sweet stench of charred flesh wouldn’t reach the witness room.

But he knew lawyers who’d said they could smell it in the corridor when they left. _Like a barbeque in the neighbour’s garden,_ one had told him.

“I don’t want her to see it,” Will murmured. “I shouldn’t have asked her to come.”

“She wants to be here for you. She’d be more upset if she let you do it alone.”

“I won’t be alone,” Will said, and turned to look at a corner of the cell. Brauer followed his gaze, confused. There was nothing there. 

Footsteps approached from the end of the corridor then, accompanied by a rattle of chains. Will’s whole body stiffened, and he made a small sound in the back of his throat, like an animal whimpering in a snare. Brauer took both Will’s hands in his own, and gave them a comforting squeeze. As the warden approached the cell, three guards at his heels, both men looked up at the clock on the wall.

It was 11.31. 

“Mr Graham. It’s time.”

Will let out a shaking breath, and screwed his eyes shut. He breathed in once through his nose, deeply, then let the breath out through his mouth, repeated the process. 

When his eyes opened, he looked ready.

“Can I say a quick goodbye?”

The warden did not bother pointing out that he had had the best part of two hours already to say his goodbyes. It was important to keep the inmate as calm as possible. And they could spare a few minutes.

Will climbed unsteadily to his feet. Brauer did the same, on legs only marginally less shaky. The two men embraced, neither able to say a word. There was nothing left to be said that the other didn’t know. 

Alana had returned behind the warden and stood, weeping silently and uncontrollably, in the doorway of the visitation cell. When she hugged Will, he worried that she wouldn’t be able to let go, and would have to be dragged off him by the guards. If that happened, he thought he might lose what remained of his mind. But after a long and painful embrace, she nestled her head against his throat one last time and stepped back, kissing him softly on the cheek.

Now alone in the cell, Will nodded once to his lawyer, offered a weak smile to Alana, then cast his eyes down as the handcuffs were placed around his wrists.

A guard escorted them out, down a short hallway. Alana was clutching Brauer’s arm tight enough to bruise. They were led to an unmarked door and instructed to wait inside. The door was closed behind them. 

The room was small and dimly lit. Four folding chairs took up most of the space, set up facing a window. Heavy curtains obscured the glass from the other side. 

A minute later, the door opened again, and Jack and Hannibal stepped inside. Alana let go off Brauer and folded into Hannibal’s arms. He held her close, his face very grave, and stroked her hair. 

“How is he?” he said quietly to Brauer. 

Brauer found he didn’t know how to answer. 

As the minutes ticked away, they coaxed Alana into taking a seat beside Hannibal, still gripping his hand tightly. Jack and Brauer sat behind them. As midnight ticked closer, the door opened again, and a few selected members of the press filed into the room to stand at the back, Freddie Lounds amongst them. She ignored the glares that were shot her way by Jack Crawford and the lawyer, holding her head high. She was very pale. 

When Dr Lecter turned to look at her, she met his gaze evenly. She did not miss the slight twitch of his lips, the flicker of an amused smile.

She’d heard about the district attorney. All the press had by now; Brauer’s office had made sure of that. Will had been telling the truth; not a doubt remained in Freddie’s mind anymore. The truth was going to come out. And she was sitting on top of the most devastating piece of testimony the country would hear when it did. Will’s own words, describing what was done to him, and by whom. 

Dr Lecter turned back to the window. Freddie swallowed, feeling as though someone had walked over her grave. 

Her gun was in the glove compartment of her car. 

*

The walk from the edge of the holding cell to the door of the death chamber was little more than fifteen feet, and still they made him do it in handcuffs, a guard holding him tight by each elbow. More guards lined the corridor, in case he changed his mind about going peacefully. 

Will kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, and tried to keep his face expressionless. He didn’t want them to see how afraid he really was.

He was grateful that he’d chosen not to eat anything for his last meal. His empty stomach was the only thing keeping him from being sick. He didn’t want to die like a frightened coward, covered in his own sour vomit.

He didn’t want to die at all. 

The guard leading the way moved to unlock the door to the death chamber. Will felt himself tensing up, his body wired to run. He did not want to see what lay beyond the door. That room held only death, a terrible shameful death that he still could not come to terms with, even now, at the very end. 

But behind him there was only death row, the place his soul had withered and died. He could not bear the thought of going back there, for another day or year, decade… 

The door opened. He caught sight of the chair inside. The guards holding him tugged his elbows to get him moving again, but his feet were rooted to the spot. 

“Come on now,” the warden said, as gently as he could manage. “It’ll all be over soon.”

Will registered the words and understood that he didn’t have a choice in the matter, that they would carry him inside and strap him down writhing and screaming if they had to; but in his fear, he could not make himself move an inch.

A hand settled on his shoulder, light as air.

“You’ll be alright,” Abigail whispered to him. “Be brave for me. I love you.”

Will closed his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. A tear ran down his cheek and dropped to the floor by his feet.

Then he stepped into the room.

The death chamber was smaller than he’d pictured it in his nightmares. The walls were white tile. The chair was made of dark wood, the leather straps light brown. It faced two curtained windows, and off to one side, behind a clear panel, he could see a control room with a heavy power lever mounted on the wall. A sombre-faced guard stood by it, his hands clasped in front of him. A clock hung on the wall behind the chair. The time was 11:44. 

They led him to the chair, and gave him a little push on the shoulders to make him sit. Bending his knees in that moment was one of the hardest things Will had ever had to do in his life. It was also, he realised dully, one of the last things he would ever do. 

Well-rehearsed and efficient, the guards quickly unfastened his handcuffs and moved his arms and legs into place, then began fastening the belts. Two across his chest. One below each bicep; one securing each wrist, each ankle. Will closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on his breathing. He could hear the clock ticking overhead. 

A wet sponge was pressed to his head without warning. Cold water ran down his face, mingling with his sweat, and Will let out a quiet gasp. It went ignored. His hands gripped the arms of the chair, knuckles white, as he felt the metal cap being placed on his head, over the sponge. A strap was pulled tight under his chin, holding his head still. He heard them screwing the current conductors in place. 

The guards retreated, leaving Will quite alone in the centre of the room. A stinging bead of sweat ran into his eye. His breathing was fast and shallow. 

The warden looked at his own watch, then up at the clock on the wall. He made a gesture to proceed, and the curtains to the witness rooms were drawn back. 

In the room on the right, Alana gasped and pressed her face into Hannibal’s shoulder, her nails drawing blood were they dug into his hand. The sight of Will like that – strapped rigid to the chair in his white prison jumpsuit, head shaven, chest heaving – would haunt her nightmares for as long as she lived. 

Behind her, Jack Crawford put a hand over his mouth, all the air seeming to leave his lungs. 

The room on the left was almost empty. There were six seats arranged in two rows, but only two were occupied. Will did not recognise the balding man in the second row, though he assumed from the resemblance that he was related to Dr Sutcliffe, perhaps a brother. 

The woman at the front he knew, though he’d only seen her very briefly. It was Marissa Schurr’s mother. 

Mrs Schurr started to weep violently when she caught sight of him, and shouted something that was muffled by the glass separating them. But Will knew what she’d said.

_“MURDERER! You killed my baby, you bastard!”_

Will couldn't look at her. His eyes full of pain, he sought out his friends in the other room instead. He caught sight of Freddie standing at the back, and felt some small relief at the sight of her face. She offered a slight nod which he couldn’t return. She saw him lift the fingers of his right hand just a fraction to her, before wrapping them tight around the wood again, as if afraid he might fall off. 

He refused to look at Hannibal. He would not give the man the satisfaction. 

Warden Marshall stepped up to the pair of identical telephones mounted on the wall and raised the first receiver to his ear. The attorney general’s office informed him that he was clear to proceed. He replaced the receiver and picked up the second. The Governor’s office delivered the same message. He put the receiver down and shook his head. There were no stays. 

“Mr Graham. Do you have any last words before sentence is carried out?”

In the white fog of his terror, Will’s reeling mind went blank. In all the dozens of times he’d visualised this moment, he had never once thought about what to say. He hadn’t needed to. Deep in his subconscious, he’d never truly believed it would get this far. Not really.

He saw Hannibal lean forward slightly, endlessly curious and enjoying this all so very much, and made up his mind.

Carried over speakers in the witness rooms, Will’s voice was hoarse but hauntingly clear. 

“The person responsible for the crimes I was accused of is in this building, but it isn’t the man you’ve got strapped to the electric chair. Some of you don’t believe that… But you will. When that day comes… I forgive you. Remember that."

He paused, wetting his dry lips, and decided he had nothing left to lose. 

His eyes locked with Hannibal’s at last, and there was no fear in them, not now. 

“Dr Lecter. When they realise what you are, and they will... I hope you die in agony, and I want you to think about me when you do.”

He swallowed, a thick lump in his throat.

“That’s all.”

Hannibal’s lips twitched into a smile, almost imperceptible, gone as quickly as it had come.

He winked. 

The warden waited a moment longer in case the inmate decided he had more to say, then nodded at the waiting guards to proceed. 

Will closed his eyes. A leather mask was placed over his face and fastened behind his head, only his nose visible now. He began to hyperventilate, his chest straining against the tight straps.

In the witness room, Alana made a high-pitched keening sound, not quite a sob or a scream, her throat raspy from crying. At the back, Freddie Lounds covered her mouth with both hands. 

Warden Marshall watched the second hand crawl round the clock. It was almost midnight. The guard in the control room had his hand on the power lever, waiting for the signal from the warden at a minute past. The ticking of the clock and Will’s loud panicked breaths beneath the mask were the only sounds.

The shrill ringing came so suddenly that every person present nearly jumped out of their skins. Will jolted as if the current had surged through him, his fingers hooked like claws around the arms of the chair, something close to a scream scraping out of his raw throat. 

Warden Marshall stared uncomprehendingly at the source of the noise as if it were completely alien to him. In truth, in this context, it was. He had never heard a phone in the death chamber ring before. 

The blinking red light beside the telephone indicated that a call was coming from the attorney general’s office. Seconds later, the light beside the other phone began to flash; the Governor’s office was calling as well.

All protocol failed him. Warden Marshall looked between the control room and the confused guards standing by the opposite wall, before turning his eyes to the struggling man in the chair, who was straining to turn his head toward the sound, utterly blind to what was happening. 

The clock struck 12:01. 

The warden made a gesture to his men, moving his hand rapidly back and forth across his throat – _kill it_ – and the curtains to the witness rooms snapped shut. 

In the room on the right, three of the seated witnesses jumped to their feet. Only Dr Lecter remained seated. Alana placed both palms against the glass and murmured Will’s name rapidly over and over, seeing only the terrified ghost of her reflection staring back at her.

Jack and Brauer exchanged a look, wide-eyed, too numb for hope to even register yet. The press behind them were whispering frantically, all apart from Freddie, whose hands were still clamped over her mouth.

Hannibal examined his own reflection in the glass, and acknowledged silently to himself that he was pleased. It would be better this way, overall. He’d had his fun, and could still keep Will for himself when it was through.

“I think we got a stay,” Brauer was repeating in a dazed voice. “I think we did it. I think we got a stay.”

Hannibal watched his reflection smile. They must have found the fishhook he’d left for them after all. In that case, Will would get much more than a stay. 

The hook was baited to catch his freedom. 

*

Inside the chamber, bewildered and overwhelmed, Will went limp against his restraints.

He had fainted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figured I had tortured both my readers and poor Will enough, so I battered out these last four chapters (forty pages!) in two days in order to get to the moment of truth about Will's fate. 
> 
> The comments from my lovely readers seemed to be split right down the middle about whether you wanted to see him die or not. In the first draft of this chapter, he did. I had a change of heart at the last minute, and so Will Graham lives to see another day. 
> 
> I apologise if this chapter is difficult to read for some people. It's an uncomfortable issue, and this chapter was difficult for me to write because of it. I am trying to handle the issue respectfully, despite some melodrama. 
> 
> There are a few chapters left, but this ordeal is almost over, I promise.
> 
> As always, many thanks to my readers and the lovely people who have been leaving encouraging comments and kudos along the way. It is always appreciated.


	19. Chapter 19

When the phone records were checked in the aftermath, they would discover that the frantic call from the attorney general’s office was placed at 11:59, thirty-six seconds past the minute. The call from Governor Hargrave’s office came a mere twenty-three seconds later.

Will had come within ninety seconds of death. 

As Freddie Lounds noted in the book (which, incidentally, wound up being titled ‘The Last Ninety Seconds’), it would have only taken the clock in the chamber to be two minutes fast and Will would have been beyond help when the phones rang. 

To say that he survived by the skin of his teeth was an understatement. 

*

The thirty minutes which followed the closing of the curtains were chaos. 

The members of the press who’d been present in the witness room were hustled out and made to wait in an office, Freddie Lounds amongst them. All their cell phones had been confiscated before they went in to prevent any unscrupulous person from recording, and the journalists from the networks were hugely frustrated that they couldn’t call in an update to their editors. Freddie stood against a wall slightly apart from the others, her breath hitching out of her throat in tiny sobs. After a couple of minutes, she sank to her haunches and put her head in her hands. 

Beyond the fences, unaware of the events unfolding inside, the news crews waited with baited breath for confirmation that the execution had been carried out. Close by, the protesters holding their candlelight vigil clustered together and held hands. The religious amongst them prayed.

Alana had to be practically peeled from the window when a guard told them to step out of the witness room. Jack asked what was going on and the guard wouldn’t answer, only repeating that he needed them to vacate the room. Alana was beside herself. The four of them were left alone in a corridor for what felt like an eternity before a different guard appeared and told them to come with him back to the cells. 

“Given the sentiment of Will’s final statement, I feel I ought to wait outside,” Hannibal murmured to Jack and Brauer. “If Will is conscious, he will not wish to see me right now.”

The other men agreed. Brauer took Alana gently by the arm, Jack flanking her on the other side, and Hannibal watched with hands thrust deep in his pockets as the three hurried after the guard and out of sight. Then he turned on his heel and strolled out of the building, having found the antiseptic smells and the stuffiness of the death house to be less than pleasant, and preferring instead to wait in the crisp fresh air where he could admire the stars.

If he had not been so calm in his certainty that he had left no evidence of himself at the courthouse, he would have continued walking; climbed into his car and vanished into the night. 

In the narrow corridor housing the cells, Jack, Alana and Brauer waited anxiously. None could quite make themselves trust that Will was alive until they saw him with their own eyes. The whole night was starting to feel like an especially cruel prank. 

The door at the end of the hallway, the door through which Will had walked to what should have been his death, was suddenly opened. Warden Marshall stepped out, his face so solemn that for a terrible moment, Brauer was sure that they had done it after all, that they had closed the curtains and flipped the switch anyway.

Then Will was brought out, his wrists and ankles in shackles, head lolling and feet barely scraping the ground as the guards holding him under the arms virtually carried him from the room. 

Alana crossed the distance between them in three strides, and threw her arms around Will with such force that the guards staggered back a step and almost let him go.

“What the hell happened in there?” Brauer demanded, as Alana murmured incoherent words of relief and grief and comfort against Will’s neck. Will only barely appeared conscious, and did not seem to have any real comprehension of what was going on. 

“I don’t know a great deal more than you do at this time, Mr Brauer,” Warden Marshall said, looking strained. “From what I gather, the district attorney has been found dead, and some piece of evidence has been uncovered at the crime scene which both the attorney general’s office and the Governor’s office believe warrants proper investigation before Mr Graham’s sentence can be carried out. They’ve granted a thirty day stay.”

Brauer’s knees buckled in his relief; he sank into a semi-crouch, his hands clasped behind his head, words failing him. 

Alana had both her hands on Will’s face, thumbs stroking gently. He couldn’t seem to look at her, his eyes unfocussed and glazed. His hands, cuffed and chained at his waist, were curled into white-knuckled fists. 

“Please take these ridiculous restraints off him,” Alana said, her voice shrill in her hysteria but becoming more confident by the second as her anger grew. “He’s having a traumatic episode. He needs to lie down.”

“He’s still a prisoner, ma’am; he needs to be in handcuffs at all times when he’s out of his cell.”

“Then put him in his goddamned cell and take the fucking things off him already!”

She startled them with the forcefulness in her voice. They did as she said, carrying Will the final ten feet to the holding cell where he collapsed onto the bunk as his restraints were unfastened and removed. Alana moved to follow him, but one of the guards held her back.

“You can’t go in there with him.”

“Watch me,” Alana snapped.

Brauer straightened up, and turned back to the warden. “Look, will you just let her sit with him for a while? Ten minutes. It’ll keep him calm. That, and I’ll slap your administration with a prisoner mistreatment lawsuit if you don’t, so...”

Warden Marshall glared at the cocky lawyer, not appreciating being told what to do in his own prison. But everything about the situation was already unheard of, and he didn’t see what harm it would do. Relenting, he nodded. “Ten minutes.”

Alana shrugged out of the grip of the guard holding her and sat on the edge of the narrow mattress on which Will was curled, his position almost foetal, face buried in the crook of his elbow. Brauer watched as she applied calming touches all over him, rubbing small circles into his shoulders and back, before easing his arm away from his face. Will’s eyes were open and unseeing. He did not resist when she lifted his head and let it rest in her lap. 

Brauer touched her arm. “I’ve got to go make a phone call, find out where we stand. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Alana was stroking Will’s head and neck soothingly, as a mother comforts a terrified child. “Okay. I’ll look after him.”

Brauer nodded, and put a hand on Will’s shoulder. He noticed the dark bruises forming under Will’s jawline and around his wrists where he’d struggled violently against his restraints during the confusion, and felt a fresh stab of sympathy for his client. He wanted to tell Will that it was over, that he was safe now. But for all he knew, they could be back here in thirty days, reliving this nightmare all over again.

“You’ve been incredibly brave,” he murmured instead. “Braver than anyone I know – a helluva lot braver than I would have been. You walked in there with your dignity intact. I’m so proud of you, you hear me? Now I’m going to go and see what I can do about getting you out of here. I’ll be back soon. Alana’s here. Hang in there, okay?”

If Will registered the words, he did not acknowledge them. He appeared almost catatonic. 

Brauer squeezed his shoulder, nodded at Alana, and strode out to find the payphone. 

Jack had been standing back from the others, speechless and drained. He looked at Will, lying silent and ashen-faced in Alana’s arms, and knew there was nothing he could say which would make it any better. After a moment’s indecision, he followed the lawyer. He had never felt so tired in his life. 

*

Leonard Brauer was not a man who cried often. He was usually too busy. He had cried when his mother died, and once or twice while he was drinking heavily during the divorce. But as he stood in an airless bleach-smelling corridor in Virginia’s death house, his forehead pressed to the cool wall and his knees shaking, and listened to his team back at the firm breathlessly explain what had gone down in the minutes preceding the miraculous reprieve, he couldn’t stop himself. The stress and exhaustion of the past seven days, coupled with the sheer relief, overwhelmed him. With the receiver cradled between his ear and shoulder, he put his hands over his eyes, and wept.

When he had regained his composure somewhat, he turned to Jack Crawford and said: “Who are Jimmy Price and Brian Zeller? Your guys?”

“Yes. They were investigating Marion Vega’s death.”

Brauer wiped at his eyes with the heel of his hand, flashing a weary grin. “Well you need to tell me what they drink, because I intend to send them each a very expensive bottle. My client owes his life to him.”

*

After finding the fishhook, with less than an hour until the execution, Price and Zeller had tried phoning anyone and everyone they could think of. Jack’s phone was switched off. The lawyer’s phone was not in service. Price had the idea to call the Governor’s office, but after wasting time finding the number, they found they couldn’t get through to anybody. Desperate, they decided to call the firm that Will’s lawyer worked for, hoping someone there might be able to reach him. 

It was a stroke of luck that they got through at all; the one harried secretary who was working late was fielding dozens of calls, mostly journalists, but a few death threats as well, which was so par for the course when they were this close to a high profile execution that she didn’t even bat an eye anymore. She almost hung up on the two frantic men shouting over one another at her, some crackpot theory about the client’s innocence involving a fishhook and a finger (the office had been inundated with hoaxes and attention-seeking lunatics for the past week, time wasters the lot of them). Then she heard the name Jack Crawford being shouted. A gut instinct told her to ask for the callers’ names, and when she heard them, she knew she recognised them from somewhere. A quick one-handed search on her laptop explained why; the names J. Price and B. Zeller appeared multiple times on the evidence list submitted at trial, noted as special investigators involved in the case. Asking them to stay on the line, she sprinted through to the conference room where Brauer’s team were clustered around a table clogged with coffee cups, cold Chinese food, laptops, and piles and piles of documents. She told them they would want to take this call. After a hasty verification that the men were who they said they were, a flustered Price explained what they had found, while Zeller emailed over the grisly pictures. 

The fifteen minutes which followed had been consumed by another frantic series of phone calls. It was very late, and the lawyers were painfully aware that most of the people who had any sway in these matters had already retired to bed. Without needing to say it out loud, they all assumed it was already too late, and their goal was rapidly ceasing to be the postponement of the execution itself and becoming more a matter of establishing a timeline. If the execution went ahead and the shit hit the fan later, they needed evidentiary support that emails and phone calls containing vital information had been sent out before the man had been killed, and went ignored. If they couldn’t save Will Graham, they could at least fight to stop this happening again.

Then one paralegal managed to catch the attention of the weary clerk at the Office of the Attorney General of Virginia, and implored the man to check the email attachment they’d just sent over, which contained side-by-side images of a fishhook submitted as evidence in the Graham conviction, and the fishhook recovered at the courthouse only minutes before. The clerk, who was already sick of Graham’s defence attorneys and looking forward to this being over so he could go home to bed, and who was not in the mood to be led on a wild goose chase, certainly not for a man whose sentence had been confirmed multiple times by multiple courts (his office had just given the go-ahead for the execution; why couldn’t the lawyers just accept defeat?), very nearly hung up the phone. But, rolling his eyes, he opened his email and clicked on the attachment, just so he could say he had if they kicked up a fuss later. Suddenly, he was wide awake. Putting the law firm on hold without warning, the clerk called the AG at home, much to the man’s displeasure (he was in his sixties and typically went to bed around nine-fifteen), and after apologising for waking him and his wife, frantically explained a matter had come up in the Graham case which was going to be a huge problem for him if ignored. While this was going on, an associate had managed to get the Governor’s office on the line, and was making the same argument to the man’s advisor, who had gone deathly pale when he saw the fishhooks and muttered something to the effect of _this is going to cost him the election, isn’t it?_

When the phones in the death chamber began to ring, the law firm was still on hold with both the Governor’s and Attorney General’s offices, with no idea what was going on at either, or at the prison. A flat screen mounted on one wall showed rolling coverage from outside the fences, but the reporters were in the dark as well. In tense silence, the lawyers waited. 

They did not find out that the execution had been postponed until near twenty minutes after it was scheduled to have gone ahead, at which point their cheering was so loud it could be heard from the street outside. 

For Price and Zeller, also on hold with the law firm and anxiously awaiting news at the courthouse, holding evidence of Will Graham’s innocence in their hands and utterly powerless to do anything about it, that was the longest twenty minutes of their lives. 

*

Brauer could hear that a bottle of something fizzy had been opened back at the office. It was as close a call as any of his team had ever heard, and they needed to unwind and celebrate. They had earned it. Brauer thanked them all sincerely for their efforts, promised drinks were on him the following night, and advised them to close up shop soon and get some sleep. After all, the fight was far from over.

When he hung up the phone, he put his back to the wall and sank to the floor, his legs stretched out in front of him on the linoleum. He wanted to sleep for a week. 

“I’m praying to every God I can think of that your guys find something juicy on that fishhook, Agent Crawford,” he said. “I really don’t think I can stomach coming back here in a month.”

Jack blanched at the thought. “They wouldn’t… Not so soon, surely.”

Brauer shrugged. “Probably not. We might be able to argue that it’s unconstitutional for them to attempt his execution a second time – you saw the duress he was under, and I’ll make sure I get some pictures of his bruises while they’re good and fresh. It would be cruel and unusual to put him through that again. There was a similar case a few years back in Ohio – executioners spent two hours trying to find a suitable vein on the inmate for his lethal injection, turned him into a human pincushion before they decided to postpone it. He got a thirty day stay, and it just keeps gets pushed back and pushed back; I doubt they’ll ever manage to kill him now, not after that shitshow. I can see the same thing happening here. I’m not saying we’ll be able to get Will’s sentence commuted, though I’d like that very much, but we could probably get that appeal jammed in the courts for a few years at least while they argued it over.”

He sighed, already dreading breaking the news to Will that he’d probably have years, perhaps decades more of this nightmare to suffer through. Another small forest’s worth of paper would be filed, another small fortune in taxpayer’s money would be eaten up by legal fees, more time would be wasted… And at the end of it, one way or another, Will would die. Strapped to the electric chair or old and grey in a federal prison cell, he would die, and it would all have been for naught, and the killing would go on and on and on, and Brauer was tired of it. He was so very, very tired. 

“You might disagree with me about this, and the courts certainly will, but what I saw in that room tonight amounted to torture, Agent Crawford,” he said. “Will Graham was tortured, and I believe to put him through that again and kill him at the end of it is nothing short of barbarism. Not that it was much better the first time around.”

His piece said, he slumped against the wall and closed his eyes. He needed a drink.

Jack glanced back down the corridor, back to where Will was living on borrowed time. “I am not disagreeing with you, Counsellor. I’ve spent three years deluding myself into believing this might be the best thing for everyone involved, including Will, but I realised today how wrong I was. I made my feelings about the situation very clear when I called the Governor this afternoon, not that it made any difference. The thought of going through that ordeal again… Of putting Will through that again… If there is anything I can do to help, anything at all, just let me know.”

Brauer opened one eye. “Thank you, Agent Crawford. Right now, I think you should go home and get some sleep, and in the morning we can start figuring out what – or probably more accurately _who_ – is on that fishhook. If your office could keep me posted, it would be greatly appreciated.”

“Of course.”

Jack paused, then extended a hand to the weary man sitting on the floor. Brauer reached up and shook it with a slight nod. Jack put on his coat and headed out, finding Dr Lecter sitting on a bench outside waiting for him. He had never been so grateful to leave a building before. 

The news of the reprieve had been broken to the press. Those who’d been present to witness the execution had been sent away; Freddie had returned to her hotel, exhausted and upset, but determined, and began to write. A few camera crews still lurked outside the gates, speculating wildly on what had caused the last minute stay. The protesters had packed up and gone home. 

Jack didn’t speak the entire drive. Dr Lecter didn’t mind; he himself was lost in thought. When they reached his home, Jack said a few words of thanks to Dr Lecter and climbed out, watching the Bentley disappear into the night before heading inside. 

Bella was still up. Her medication had altered her sleeping pattern beyond repair, and she often slept the days away and found herself at loose ends at night, tossing and turning beside her husband as she tried not to wake him. Tonight Jack was thankful for it. He found her in bed, propped up by a heap of pillows, a thick book held in her frail, bony hands. 

“Jack? What’s wrong?”

Jack slipped out of his coat and shoes and climbed, fully-dressed, into the bed beside her. Surprised, Bella marked her place in her book and set it aside, not hesitating to wrap her arms around him as he came to her. Jack thought about Will, and about his wife, with her own death sentence, her own hair falling out in clumps, her own room her prison. Uncontrollably, he began to sob.

“Oh sweetheart,” Bella murmured, pulling him closer, until his face was pressed to her chest and her hands cradled his head. “Hush now… It’s okay. It’s okay.”

But it wasn’t. Things were very far from okay.


	20. Chapter 20

Brauer sat with his head in his hands for several minutes after Jack had gone, collecting himself as best he could. He removed his suit jacket and loosened his tie, rolled up his shirtsleeves, not wanting to feel like a lawyer in that moment. He felt ten years older than he had when he said goodbye to Will barely an hour earlier. At the same time, he felt like he was twenty-nine again, sitting in numb horror outside the chamber after losing his first client, utterly stunned that it had happened, that he had let it happen…

When he clambered to his feet, he went to find the warden. He was bone-tired and about ready to drop, but there were still the logistics of Will Graham’s present accommodations which needed to be ironed out, and he wasn’t leaving until he was certain that Will would survive the night.

Will’s new date with death was scheduled for January 9th. He would be transported back to his regular death row cell in Waverly until the week after Christmas, at which point he would be brought straight back. Brauer was not happy with the arrangement – Will was in such a fragile state that moving him anywhere was a profoundly bad idea, let alone back to the cell he dreaded and despised – but leaving Will sitting fifteen feet from the room he’d almost died in was no better. After a few terse words from both sides, they struck a compromise of sorts – Will would not be moved for thirty-six hours, giving him a little more time to adjust to what had happened, and come to terms with the idea of going back there.

It was not a good situation by any means, but Brauer had to admit that it was a hell of a lot better than the one they’d been in an hour ago.

It was a little after one. The lawyer returned to the cells to find a puffy-eyed Alana still sitting with Will, who appeared a little more alert than before. He was upright now, huddled against the wall with his arms wrapped tight around his knees. Alana was stroking his arm. Two guards watched from beyond the bars, grumbling in frustration. 

“She won’t come out,” one said to Brauer as he approached. “We told her when ten minutes was up, but she won’t move. And we didn’t want to restrain a lady, given the circumstances.”

“A very wise decision,” Brauer murmured, stepping into the cell. He crouched down in front of Will. “I know this is a ridiculous question, but how are you doing?”

Will swallowed. The movement looked painful, the bruises beneath his chin already a deep bluish purple. His throat was raw from crying; when he spoke, his voice was husky and low. 

“I’m great, how are you?”

Brauer was immensely relieved to hear him even talking, let alone joking. He offered a crooked grin. “You’ve got some balls, I’ll tell you that.” 

Will almost managed to return the smile. But not quite. 

“What… What happens now?”

A long silence. Alana fixed Brauer with a hard stare and shook her head a fraction, but he had never lied to his client before and didn’t plan to start now. He sighed. 

“I’m going to be straight with you. This might be difficult to hear, but I’m just going to get it out there. Some new piece of evidence was discovered earlier today – I’m not entirely sure what it was, but it caused a stir. A thirty day stay had been granted while it can be processed. Now we’re all keeping our fingers crossed that it’s something that’s going to help you, but we need to be prepared in the eventuality that it’s not.”

Will’s eyes were wide and frightened. He let his breath out in a shaking gasp. 

“So what you’re saying is… If this turns out to be nothing, I have to do this all again in thirty days? Only this time there won’t be a phone call, right?”

Alana was glaring at Brauer. He ignored her. It was like ripping off a Band-Aid – this was going to hurt either way, and Will might as well know sooner rather than later. 

“There’s a possibility, yes, but it’s very unlikely. The circumstances here are highly unusual, Will, and a lot of people are going to come under a lot of criticism if we’re forced to repeat this nightmare in a month’s time. They’ll want to let the hype die down, let the media move onto something else before they even think about bringing you back here. What this has done is bought us time, and time has been in short supply lately. I’m going to do everything in my power to push that thirty day stay back as far as I can, and hopefully I can buy us a few more years to battle this thing out in the courts.”

Will’s wide eyes filled with tears. Slowly, he put his head in his hands.

“A few years…” he mumbled, his shoulders hitching as he began to sob.

“That’s enough,” Alana said, sharply. “He doesn’t need to hear this right now.”

“What do you want me to say, Dr Bloom? That everything’s going to be fine and we’ll all live happily ever after?” Brauer snapped, regretting it immediately. In a calmer tone, he continued: “The fact is, we’re not going to know where we stand until the FBI has finished their investigation. Until then, unpleasant as it is, we just have to sit tight and wait it out. Will, they’re going to keep you here until the day after next. Then you’ll be taken back to your regular cell.”

Will flinched, a shudder running through him. 

“I can’t go back there…” he murmured, the words becoming twisted in a strangled sob. “I can’t go back there for another three years…”

“Will…” Alana said, but there was nothing she could say which would make it any better, and they all knew it. 

“I’m doing everything I can,” Brauer repeated, wondering if the words sounded as inadequate to Will as they did to his own ears. “Will, look at me.”

A pause, then Will dragged his hands free of his face. His eyes were red-rimmed and watery.

“You’ve been put through something that no person should ever have to go through, and I’m sorrier than you’ll ever know,” Brauer said. “I want to tell you it’s all going to be okay, but I respect you too much to make promises that I might not be able to keep. I will tell you this, though – you’re going to get through the night. Do you hear me? It’s after midnight, and you’re still alive, and you’re going to get through this night. Tomorrow is another day, and we’re going to keep fighting. It’s a lot to ask, I know, but I need you to have a little faith in me. Can you do that?” 

Will was silent for a long time, his jaw twitching. Finally, he nodded. Brauer patted his knee. Despite the fact that Will was not much younger than him, and probably a good deal smarter than him, Brauer had the absurd feeling of talking to a child. Everything about Will’s posture, his averted glances, made him seem very small. Very fragile. 

“You need to get some sleep, or you’re going to hospitalise yourself,” Brauer continued, as gently as he could manage. “And when they bring you breakfast in the morning, I need you to at least try to eat it. I can’t fight to get your ass out of here if you starve yourself to death before I get a chance, understand?”

Another weary nod, another twitch of the jaw. Brauer straightened up.

“Alana and I have to leave now – yes we do, or they’re going to remove you forcefully,” he said, as Alana opened her mouth to protest. “I’ll call tomorrow evening, and the day after they’ll transport you, and then I’ll come visit again and we talk over what’s to come. But right now you’re going to sleep. Dr Bloom, shall we?”

Alana looked like she wanted to object, but Will touched her arm and nodded. She stood and so did he, unfurling his limbs and clambering unsteadily to his feet, folding into her gentle embrace. When she finally let go, he offered his hand to his lawyer. His fingers were very cold.

“Thank you,” he murmured, as they shook hands. “No matter what happens… Thank you.”

“It’s been an honour handling your case. And we’re going to keep fighting.”

Will nodded, but he didn’t seem convinced. The glazed look in his eyes that had been present when they carried him from the chamber had not lifted. Brauer hoped that sleep would help, but he was worried. Will looked defeated. And if this stay amounted to nothing more than another disappointment, Brauer wasn’t certain his client would live to see the death chamber again.

“Keep him under suicide watch,” he murmured to the warden as he left, low enough that Alana wouldn’t hear. “If your men let him out of their sight for so much as a minute, and he chews through his wrists or hangs himself with his bedsheet, I’ll sue you so fast you won’t know what’s hit you.”

Alana cried for most of the drive, and then abruptly fell asleep. Behind the wheel, a cup of gas station coffee clutched in one hand, Brauer concentrated on not crashing the car and put all other thoughts out of his head. When he finally crawled into bed, he would allow himself the luxury of sleep for perhaps five or six hours, then he’d be straight back to the office trying to sort this mess out.

In his cell beside the death chamber, watched over by a bored guard, Will’s sleep was so deep that even the nightmares could not wake him. It was the unheeding sleep of the dead.


	21. Chapter 21

Jack slept later than he intended to, and considered calling in sick when he woke. Nobody would really have blamed him after the previous night. There was work to be done, but his team were more than capable of handling it.

If it had been anybody other than Will Graham, he would have stayed at home. But if there was evidence that might help spare Will’s life sitting in the lab, Jack wanted to be there to oversee it being processed. He owed Will that much.

Around ten hours after Will had been scheduled to die, Jack pulled into the parking lot at the BAU and stormed inside, with a look on his face that warded off any curious comments about what had gone down at the prison the previous night. 

When he opened the door to his office, he found Beverly waiting for him inside.

“We need to talk,” she said. “You’re not going to like what I have to say, and it might cost me my job, but I have to say it. Please close the door.”

Thirteen minutes later, an agent walking past in the corridor heard a roar, followed by the sound of something shattering in Jack Crawford’s office. He had thrown a mug at the wall.

*

“It’s people alright,” Zeller said, when Jack walked into the lab, Beverly following at his heels. The fishhook recovered at the Vega crime scene lay, partially deconstructed, under a microscope. “We won’t find out who until DNA comes back, but I can confirm this lure is made of human materials.”

“And they’re tied almost identically to the one’s we found in Will Graham’s house three years ago,” Price said. “The details of those lures was never made public, Jack. That kind of craftsmanship would be almost impossible to replicate unless…”

“Unless the same person tied all of them,” Jack finished, grimly. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, his head aching. “And we know Will Graham didn’t tie that one.”

“I mean, they don’t allow him sharp objects,” Zeller said helpfully, and flinched under Jack’s withering glare.

“And the finger?” Jack said, looking at Price.

“Female. We won’t know who from until the tests come back, tomorrow at the earliest. I can say it was cut off while she was still breathing.”

A silence fell over the room as each of them contemplated what that would mean if the finger belonged to the person they were all thinking of.

“I guess all we can do now is wait,” Jack said, eventually, looking at Beverly, the things she had told him still echoing in his head. “Someone went to great lengths to leave us a message. We won’t know what it says for sure until we get the results, so let’s not make any wild speculations just yet. Understand?”

Zeller glanced at Price, who looked down at his shoes, shifting uncomfortably.

“Is… Is Will okay?” Zeller mumbled.

Jack shook his head, his eyes downcast. “No. Will Graham is far from okay.”

“If these tests come back and we find out he was telling the truth…” Zeller began, faltering, thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of his lab coat. “I mean, it was the evidence we found which put him away… If we got it so wrong…”

“You saved his life,” Jack said. “Both of you. That’s all that matters.”

“This is mad,” Price said, shaking his head. 

Yes, Jack thought, glancing at Beverly again, who looked grim. It was utterly, inconceivably insane. 

He only hoped that the same could not be said for Will.

*

Brauer was speaking, words about patience and perseverance, a calm tone barely concealing his simmering frustration and weariness, but Will wasn’t really listening.

The cuffs rubbed his bruised wrists. His body was sore and shaky, and it was taking a lot of concentration to remain standing, to keep holding the phone. 

The lawyer said something about his transfer back to death row the following day. Will said nothing, though he did not understand why they wanted to transfer him again. It had been only a fortnight since they brought him here and told him it was the end. Now they were sending him back, back there; back to the windowless box, the filthy food and the noise, the incessant clamouring noise. And, sooner or later, he’d be brought here again, to repeat this madman’s caricature of a death once more, and finally. 

_Like pass the parcel,_ he thought, _only I’m the parcel. How long will it be before they tear me open?_

He stared straight ahead, his face blank as his lawyer talked in his ear. His mind drifted. He wondered if this was what hell was. Reliving the worst day, month, year of his life, over and over and over again. Nothing but this stasis, this waiting for a death that never came. Forever.

Brauer was repeating his name. Slowly, he came back to himself. He mumbled some vague comment that he understood, and hung up the phone.

Back in his cell, he lay flat on his back on his bunk and stared unblinking at the ceiling. Any small noise from the guard watching him, or from the corridor beyond the cells, made him flinch violently. In the back of his mind, he did not believe the night of his execution had passed him by. He was still waiting. Any minute now, they would come for him while his lawyer wasn’t here to protect him. Drag him screaming and pleading from his cell, and take him back to that room, and finish the job.

He thought about being transported the next day. He thought about trying to run, and whether they’d try to catch and subdue him, or just shoot him in the back. He thought about suicide, and whether it might not be better than the alternative. He thought about these things, and without realising he was doing it, he began to cry.

After some time, he closed his eyes and tried to find Abigail, but the stream was empty and cold, and he was alone.

Eventually, his cheeks still damp with tears, he slept.

*

The events of the following day would be written about and discussed many times by many people, but Freddie Lounds summarised it best in the heartfelt final chapter of her enormously successful book:

_Two years, eleven months, and four days. More than twenty-five thousand hours in total. That’s how long Will Graham sat on death row for the crimes of another man, a man that we all know now to be a monster. In that time, Will suffered a fate which would drive most to despair and despondency. At the end of it, he came within ninety seconds of death._

_But on a freezing evening in December, not long before Christmas, he was finally set free._

*

They came for him at noon.

Will let them put the handcuffs and leg irons on him in silence. He watched them pack his few possessions back into a cardboard box. He listened to the warden awkwardly thank him for his good behaviour, and moved when they told him to, through the corridors of the death house, out into the cold winter air. It felt very strange on his bald head, prickling like needles. The snow was thick on the ground, and some got into his plastic shower shoes as he walked, melting into freezing slush between his toes. He said nothing. He looked up at the pale grey sky and watched a bird circling lazily, unaware that it was free and he was not. Then he was put in the back of the van, and the doors were closed behind him. 

The guards sitting in back with him talked to each other as if he wasn’t there. Will supposed he wasn’t, not really. He’d been taken here to die. Whatever they were driving away with now was just a ghost of a man.

He looked at his handcuffs, and considered how far he could get if he broke his thumb to get out of them and lunged for the door.

He looked at the guards’ guns and wondered what he’d have to do to provoke them into shooting him.

He looked down at his hands, and said nothing the entire journey.

The drive took about forty-five minutes, and when they arrived he allowed them to take him out of the van and into the building without a fight. When they opened the door to his old cell and told him to go inside, his knees locked in his terror and they had to push him. The cell was somehow smaller than he remembered. He felt his chest constrict in a sudden panic of claustrophobia. He put his box of possessions down on the desk, sat down on his bunk, and struggled to keep from crying. 

He wished he’d tried to fight. 

*

About four hours after Will arrived back on death row, the lab finished analysing the DNA samples sent over from the Vega crime scene. 

The organic material found on the fishing lure was all identified as human remains from Will Graham’s supposed victims. A strand of hair woven into the monofilament had come from Georgia Madchen. Bone fragments had come from Cassie Boyle and Marissa Schurr. A tooth from Donald Sutcliffe. 

There was also an optic nerve and arteries from Judge Davies, and veining from the victim of a grisly unsolved murder the previous year; a local councilman who’d brokered a woodland development deal to put up a parking lot, and had been gutted and turned into a tree for his trouble. 

It was a murder which had long since been attributed to the Chesapeake Ripper.

Jack put his head in his hands when he heard the results, his voice barely audible when he spoke.

“Will didn’t kill any of them. We thought he was inside the Ripper’s head, recreating his work… There was no copycat. It was always the Ripper. He’s finally taking credit for those murders.”

Price nodded gravely. “There’s more. The severed finer is confirmed to have come from Abigail Hobbs. It was cut off around forty-eight hours before it was found. And blood was still circulating her body when it was removed.”

“So what you’re telling me,” Jack said, “is that while Will Graham was preparing to be executed for the murder of Abigail Hobbs, Abigail Hobbs was still alive?”

“At least when the finger was cut off, yeah,” Zeller said. “Whether she still is…”

“One more thing,” Price said. “The victim’s hands and wrists were smeared in blood, and it wasn’t hers.”

“Let me guess. It was Will Graham’s blood.”

“Bingo. Though how or when the Ripper came into possession of enough of Will’s blood to do that, I couldn’t tell you.”

“Probably took it the same day he forced an ear down Will’s throat,” Zeller said, gruffly.

“The judge was mindless and heartless, and the district attorney had Will’s blood on her hands,” Jack muttered. “I suppose subtlety was never the Ripper’s preferred method.”

“The point couldn’t have been clearer if the killer had written us a note,” Price said.

“He didn’t need to,” Jack murmured, glancing at the photos of the Vega crime scene pinned to the wall, seeing the Ripper’s fingerprints all over it now. “He wrote us a poem.”

The evidence of Will’s innocence was substantial and unequivocal. The Attorney General’s office agreed, though everyone involved quietly acknowledged how terrible the backlash was going to be when the news got out. Even as Jack got off the phone with them, he could hear the spin doctoring beginning, the blame being prepared to be passed.

The most important thing was to get Will Graham out of prison as soon as humanly possible. Not for his own sake, but because the longer he sat there, the worse the repercussions were going to be.

The paperwork for the full exoneration was filed within the hour.

Brauer got the call from Jack around six, followed shortly after by a call from the Attorney General’s office confirming the news. He was already on his way to the prison by then, too stunned to even celebrate just yet. 

*

A rap on knuckles on the door to his cell woke him from his uneasy doze, from a dream where he had been strapped down and unable to move, without understanding why.

For a second, he forgot that he had been transferred, and was horrified. Hadn’t he left this place? Had he died and woken here again, doomed to repeat the nightmare?

“Graham. Put your wrists through the slot.”

Will stood but made no attempt to approach the door. “What’s going on?”

“How the hell should I know? Just put your wrists through the door so I can handcuff you, and we’ll go find out. You don’t want to make trouble on your first night back.”

Will hesitated, shaking. They wouldn’t come for him again so soon. Would they? He couldn’t quite remember where he was. He couldn’t remember what month it was, or what year. He could barely remember who he was anymore.

“Inmate, just put your fucking wrists through the slot,” the guard sighed. All the guards on the block felt sorry for Graham; they felt bad that he was back, when it should all be over for him by now, and it was quite obvious that he was going insane. Some of the more cynical men had started a bet as to how long he’d last before he tried to kill himself. But they all dreaded being the one to find him. “Don’t make me come in there. Neither of us want that.”

Will hesitated a moment longer, then slipped his feet into the awful rubber shoes and let the guard handcuff him. They took him out of the cell and put the leg irons on him. He asked again what was going on, and they told him to shut up and move. Paranoia gnawed at the pit of his stomach. He felt sick. At one point he stumbled and struggled to right himself after, and they had to half-drag him the rest of the way.

They took him to a room he’d only been in once, when he had first arrived all those years ago, and been told to strip out of his civilian clothes and bend over. He could not image why they’d brought him here. 

His lawyer was waiting for him. Beside him stood a tall, slightly stooped older man in a cheap suit and spectacles. Will had never spoken to the man, but he knew who he was by reputation.

“You can take the restraints off him,” the warden said. Will rubbed his wrists absently as the cuffs were removed, glancing around warily. He looked at his lawyer for help, and was surprised to find the man smiling and close to tears.

“They’ve reversed your sentence, Will,” Brauer said. “It’s over. You’re free.”

Will stared at him, his lip trembling. He looked like a child told something so immense about the world that he simply could not wrap his head around it. 

He looked at the warden, half-expecting the man to tell him it was a cruel joke, but the man nodded, his face creasing into a troubled frown.

“It’s true, son. You’re a free man. I’m sorry you’ve had to go through this, dreadfully sorry.”

Will looked back at his lawyer, his lips parting in speechless awe as the truth sank in. 

Then he put his hands over his eyes and began to weep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the two prior to it were intended as something of a cool down after the stress of chapter eighteen. My apologies for taking so long to update; I have been immensely busy. 
> 
> But hooray, Will is free! Thanks to possibly the fastest DNA testing in history, but suspend your disbelief on that one.


	22. Chapter 22

The hours which followed his release were confusing and overwhelming for Will.

Brauer had raced to the prison in such haste when he heard the news that he had not thought to bring Will a change of clothes. The suit which Will had been wearing when he first arrived on death row after his trial was retrieved from storage, and the warden opened the door to a small office and told Will he could step inside to change in privacy. It was a luxury Will had been denied for some time, and he felt unease settle over him as the door was closed behind him, and he was left alone with his bundle of musty smelling clothes. 

Slowly, Will stripped himself naked and began to redress in real clothes. Slipping into his old underwear felt magnificent after putting up with the scratchiness of the regulation briefs for so long, although it was obvious that none of his clothes had been washed after he’d last worn them, just stuffed into a box and tucked away, forgotten about. The stink of fear-sweat still clung to the fabric as he pulled on his shirt and fumbled with the buttons. 

He realised he’d never been expected to wear the clothes again, and swallowed down a lump of terror at the implication, still raw and horrible in his mind.

He’d lost a lot of weight since he’d been here, and his old clothes were hanging off him. His belt, like his tie, had been taken from him after the trial in case he’d tried to kill himself with it, and when he opened the door to the office to meet his lawyer again, he had to hold his trousers up with one hand. 

Brauer had to fill out some paperwork for his release before they could leave. He found Will a comfortable place to sit while he awaited, apologising repeatedly and berating the justice system for all its bureaucracy. Will was still too numb with shock to really understand what was being said to him, but he nodded when spoken to, and tried to seem alert. In reality, he was struggling to believe this was really happening; the terror that he would suddenly wake to sanity and find it had all been a desperate dream was etched so deeply beneath his skin that he couldn’t tear it out. It was a fear he would never be able to shake off completely; years later, he would still wake sweat-drenched and fearful, believing he was in his cell, that they were coming for him. 

He sat and fidgeted, running his hands over his smooth head, marvelling at the absence of handcuffs. Somebody brought him water in a real glass, something he’d never have been allowed as a prisoner (he could smash it and shank a guard, or slash his wrists with the shards) and he sipped it quietly while Brauer grumbled and argued with the warden and angrily filled out forms. When he was told to sign his name on a dotted line, Will did as he was told, his hand shaking so violently he dropped the pen. His signature looked like something done by a child, or a lunatic.

Finally, he was allowed to leave.

The prison gave him a hundred dollars in compensation, to _‘get him back on his feet’_. A hundred dollars, and a stilted apology, for taking three years and almost taking his life. It might have been funny if it wasn’t so sad. Brauer promised him fervently that they were going to sue the state until it paid out the nose for its mistake, but Will wasn’t listening. 

He was outside, and he was free.

Brauer had been walking slightly ahead, towards his car, thinking only of getting Will away from the prison as fast as possible. He stopped and turned around when he realised Will wasn’t following. Will was standing perfectly still, breathing slowly, staring up at the sky, at its blanket of stars. 

“I haven’t been outside at night for three years,” he murmured, raising a hand towards the waxing moon. “I forgot how bright the stars were…”

Brauer strolled back towards him until he could stand shoulder to shoulder with the man, tilting his head back to follow Will’s gaze. He realised it had been a very long time since he himself had stopped to admire the stars, always so preoccupied with work and clients, with matters of life and death. For a perfect moment, he stopped and he looked and, like Will, he felt free.

A single tear ran down Will’s trembling cheek. He didn’t notice, captivated by the cold air striking his face, the smell of trees on the wind, the taste of freedom on his lips. 

“I don’t… I don’t know how to feel.”

“Feel like a free man,” the lawyer said. “That’s what you are, and in the eyes of the whole world, you’re a courageous innocent man who’s been to hell and back and lived to tell the tale. Nobody is ever going to fuck with you again, okay? Not on my watch.”

Will’s throat bobbed as he swallowed down fresh tears. “Thank you. For not giving up on me.”

“Mr Graham, it has been my privilege,” Brauer said, and he meant it.

They stood for a time, both shivering beneath the unbounded skies. Will seemed in no hurry to move, though it was below freezing.

“You’re going to catch your death of cold if you stand here all night,” Brauer said eventually. “Come on, let’s get you out of here.”

He paused, then slipped out of his wool topcoat and draped it over Will’s shoulders. With a gentle hand on his back, he led the man to his car and Will climbed inside, glancing over his shoulder as if frightened that others were following them, but they were alone. He sat with his hands curled in his lap, unused to the feel of such freedom, of being in a vehicle without handcuffs and chains, without guns trained on him. Brauer adjusted the heating until it was comfortably snug, before starting the engine and heading for the gates. 

He did not fail to notice Will tensing as they approached the checkpoint, still expecting to be told it was a mistake and he couldn’t leave after all, not ever.

Half a dozen news vans were clustered outside the gates, reporters immediately swarming the car as it passed through. Brauer kept the windows rolled up and ignored them, though he knew the footage of them leaving would be on every network within the hour. He’d already called his office and told them to send out a press release stating that the attorney for Mr Graham would be making a statement in the morning outside his office, and nothing would be said until that time; for now, the priority was getting Will to somewhere he could rest. He knew everybody was secretly hoping that Will would attend the press conference in the morning as well, but Brauer knew there wasn’t a chance in hell that that was going to happen. He certainly wasn’t going to force Will into appearing, publicity be damned.

It started snowing again, thick flurries swept aside by the windshield wipers and vanishing into the black night. Brauer glanced at Will, huddled in the passenger seat with the lawyer’s coat still draped over his hunched shoulders. He was staring intently out the window, his face unreadable.

“You’re going to put a face on the death penalty, you know,” Brauer said. 

Will was silent for a while, mulling that over. When he did speak, his voice was low and immensely weary.

“All I want to put my face on right now is a pillow.”

A long pause. Brauer drummed his fingers nervously on the steering wheel.

“We need to talk about where you’re going to stay.”

Will’s face remained expressionless. “I don’t have a home anymore,” he said.

“Alana Bloom called me as soon as she heard the news. She wants you to stay with her. But, as your friend, I’m not sure that’s the best idea for you right now.”

Will was quiet for a time. He thought about the pity in Alana’s eyes, the guilt, the instinct to mother him and fuss over him and try to make amends, and he felt himself recoil. It would all be too much. He didn’t think he could handle it just yet. 

“I don’t want to stay with Alana,” he said, quietly. 

“I can put you up in a hotel. I’ll foot the bill. You’re going to get a lot of money when we file the wrongful imprisonment lawsuit, and you can pay me back then if you want to, but it’s not necessary. You’ll be comfortable in a hotel.”

“With the press lying in wait in reception.”

“You might have to hide out in your room for a few days, at least until the hype dies down,” Brauer conceded. 

Will huffed out a humourless chuckle, running a hand over his bald head. “Back to solitary confinement. There’s no escaping it, is there?” 

Brauer stared out at the bleak world through the windshield. He didn’t want to force Will into hiding in a hotel. The ordeal might ostensibly be over for him, but Will’s mental state had deteriorated significantly in the previous weeks. Brauer was afraid to leave him alone, terrified he might try to hurt himself even now.

He was suddenly angry. It was indicative of how broken the system was that, despite being proven innocent, his client was just turned out onto the streets with barely enough money in his pocket to get a bus ticket and a hot meal. Will was one of the lucky ones; he had people who cared for him, people who could collect him and find him a place to stay while he tried to piece his life back together. That wasn’t always the case. It made Brauer sick. 

But now wasn’t the time for anger. That time would come when he stood in front of the press in the morning, and when he finally got a chance to take Will’s lawsuit to trial. For now, all that was important was looking after Will. 

“Come stay with me,” Brauer said. “You might be sick of the sight of me by now, but I have a spare room and the press don’t know where I live. And if they find out, I can legally chase them off my property if they get too close. You’ll have some privacy at least.”

Will looked at him and almost managed a smile. “I would appreciate that, thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Brauer said. “Do you want some food? When did you last eat?”

“It… I don’t remember. It doesn’t matter.”

“Will, you’re wasting away. Please let me buy you some food.”

Will wrung his hands together, uncomfortable with somebody treating him well all of a sudden. He recalled an incident during his first fortnight on death row, a lifetime ago it seemed, when he’d tried to argue with the guard delivering his food that the meat they’d given him clearly had the grey sheen of something going mouldy. The tray had been knocked to the floor when he refused to take it; he was told he’d eat what he was given and be thankful for it – and furthermore, if he didn’t clean that shit up before they next came by, he’d spend the night in the punishment cell. He’d left it for a while, still unfamiliar enough with such treatment to feel wounded by it. Eventually, though, he’d become so hungry that he’d eaten it off the floor, mouldy meat and all. He had never complained about the food again.

With a few exceptions, the guards had not treated him like a human. He supposed it was the only way they could make sense of their job, shepherding the dead men walking, to treat them like a number and a crime and not a person who had hopes and fears, dreams. 

Will realised he had stopped feeling human some time ago, and was now quite unaccustomed to being treated as such. The transition back was going to take some getting used to.

“I am quite hungry,” he admitted, hesitantly. “I would like something to eat.”

Brauer pulled into the next drive-through they passed and got him something to eat, something with hot fresh bread and good cheese and meat, with crisp salad. Will nibbled around the edges of it as they drove, chewing slowly, finding it remarkably rich and flavourful after so many years of bland and overcooked prison food. 

He thought of Dr Lecter then, of his elaborate dinner parties and exotic dishes, of all the human meat which had passed his lips, which had been fed to his guests without their knowledge. He thought of a breakfast protein scramble containing what he’d thought at the time was pork, and of a dozen other meals he’d shared with the man, with Hannibal sitting opposite him, sitting and watching Will eat the meat of the victims he’d soon be accused of butchering… 

Quite unexpectedly, he threw up in his lap. 

Brauer glanced at him, flipped his turn signals, and pulled into a rest stop. He gave the seat a cursory wipe with a napkin as Will hunched outside the car, breathing heavily with his palms pressed against his eyes. 

“Are you alright?”

Will nodded, swallowing. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologise. I expected you to do it sooner or later if I’m honest.”

“This is all… It’s all…”

“You’re overwhelmed,” Brauer said gently, putting a hand on Will’s shoulder as he straightened up. “I would be very surprised if you weren’t. What you need is a little tipple of whisky to help you sleep and a warm bed. Come on. We’re nearly there.”

The rest of the drive they made in silence, Will’s breath hitching out of him in quiet sobs. 

Brauer had a modest two-storey house on a quiet street. The place had the quality of a showroom; Will got the distinct impression as he crossed the threshold that the lawyer didn’t spend much time there. The furnishings were sleek and tasteful, a few feminine touches (a vase of wilting flowers, some candles that needed replacing) suggesting a woman lived there sometimes, but not recently. 

Brauer poured them both a small whisky and handed Will a glass, holding up his own.

“To your freedom,” he said, and they toasted.

The whisky was very good, and Will had not had alcohol in so long that it went straight to his head. It calmed him considerably. 

Brauer showed him the spare room and left him alone, telling him he’d be right down the hall if Will needed anything and wishing him a good night. Will sat on the edge of the soft bed and slipped off his shoes, glancing around. The room was at least twice the size of the cell he’d spent the last three years of his life confined in. After all those endless hours spent dreaming of the outside, he suddenly felt uncomfortable having so much space. He didn’t know what to do with it. 

There was a floor-length mirror on one wall. Will stripped in front of it, unable to meet the eyes of the sad, pale man in the reflection. He examined the dark bruises under his chin, around his wrists, his biceps, and shuddered at the memory of how he’d got them. He wondered if the horror of that night would ever fade, but he didn’t think so. If he closed his eyes, he could recall how it felt to be in that room, still strapped to the chair and waiting to die, as clearly as if he’d never left. In some ways, he hadn’t, and he never would.

He realised he had nothing to wear to bed, and climbed beneath the pristine sheets in only his old musty underwear. 

Perhaps it was the whisky, or simply the sheer exhaustion, but he was out as soon as his head hit the pillow.

When he dreamt, he dreamt of Hannibal. 

*

Brauer rarely slept long past dawn, and the following morning was no exception. Will was still fast asleep as the lawyer dressed in his favourite suit and drank his first coffee of the day, before climbing into his car and heading for the office. He was the first one to arrive, which was the way he preferred it. As other lawyers and paralegals trickled in, each stopping outside his door to congratulate him on such an incredible victory, Brauer shuffled paperwork and made another pot of coffee and tried to look busy, but his mind was elsewhere. 

He should have felt good. His client was alive, a wrongful conviction had been overturned, and he was about to make his victory lap in front of the press. He was happy, satisfied even. But he didn’t feel good. Not in knowing that the reason his client was alive had a lot more to do with the whims of a serial killer than it did with anything he himself had done. And certainly not in knowing that, at that moment, a broken and wounded man was sleeping in his house because he had had everything taken from him, and had nowhere else to go. A man who had woken him twice in the night when he started screaming.

When the press began to gather outside the building for the press conference, Brauer swallowed the last of his coffee, straightened his tie, and headed out to meet them.

He had not prepared any notes.

There was a long silence after he took the podium that had been set up for him on the steps of the building. Cameras flashed. Brauer took a sip from the bottle of water he’d brought, cleared his throat, and stared wearily down the camera lenses. 

He had everything and nothing to say. 

“Where do I even start? I suppose I should begin by saying how grateful I am that we are having this conversation while my client is still breathing, despite the best attempts of the state of Virginia to put him to death. I’m incredibly grateful for that, and my client certainly is, though his mind has been so damaged by what’s happened to him that he’s still wary his release is all some kind of elaborate and mean-spirited joke. And, really, he’s right. This whole thing has been a joke, and mean-spirited doesn’t even begin to cover it.

“For anyone who’s been living under a rock for the past few days, let me remind you that on December 10th, my client was scheduled to die in the electric chair. Myself, along with a handful of other people who care about him, had to witness our friend – a good man, a terrified and mentally ill man – strapped to that apparatus, telling us that he forgave us for letting this happen to him as he waited to be put to death. I want you all to imagine for a moment what that felt like – for Will Graham, for those of us watching. Some of you won’t want to. I don’t blame you. I wish I hadn’t had to see it either. 

“My client came within ninety seconds of death that night. He has since been issued a full exoneration, and is expected to just forget about his little visit to Virginia’s death chamber. But he won’t forget, and neither will I. That experience, coupled with the horror of spending three terrible years on death row as an innocent man, has traumatised him in a manner which I would not wish on anyone. 

“So yes, I am grateful that Will Graham is alive. But I’m also angry. Over the following weeks, as this mess unfolds, you’re going to hear a lot of opinions from a lot of people involved explaining how and why this happened. They’ll tell you that the system simply cannot be completely airtight, and that sometimes mistakes happen. They’ll tell you that Will Graham’s exoneration this week is proof that the system ultimately works, even if the wheels are a little slow to turn. They’ll tell you that nobody is to blame, that steps are being made to stop this happening again, the death penalty works and we shouldn’t throw the baby out with bathwater. 

“I’m here to tell you that this, quite frankly, is bullshit. 

“The system is broken beyond repair. Mistakes can and will always happen, no matter what safeguards you try to put in place, and that’s a real problem when we’re gambling with lives. And people most definitely are to blame – the people who heard dozens and dozens of appeals filed by my office on Will Graham’s behalf over the course of three years, valid appeals pertaining to the life of an innocent man, and rejected them. These people – the Governor of this state amongst them – will of course be named in the lawsuit we’ll be filing shortly. But the larger issue here needs to be addressed. My client, an innocent man, came within ninety seconds of being executed and lives to tell the tale. I have no doubt that others like him have not been so lucky. And there will be more.”

He looked out over the sea of cameras, feeling the old fire ignite in him again.

“What are we going to do about that?”

*

Will slept very late, and woke to confusion, with no memory of where he was.

He was not in his cell. The room was unfamiliar.

When the events of the previous day dawned on him, he lay still for a long time, barely trusting it to be true. The dread that he might blink and wake up back there weighed heavily on him. 

The bed was very comfortable, and so much bigger than the narrow bunk he’d slept on for years that he felt very small beneath the vast swathe of the duvet. He stretched his stiff legs, his toes curling, then swung them out of bed. 

The carpet was thick and soft beneath his toes. He opened the curtains and stood frozen for several minutes at the window, his throat bobbing as he struggled not to cry. 

He could see the sky.

People scurried along the snow-swept street below the iron sky, bundled up in winter coats and scarves, their cheeks apple-red from the cold. Will realised he could join them if he wanted – he could step outside and feel the crunch of snow beneath his bare feet, the bite of the winter wind on his face; he could walk and walk and nobody would stop him. 

Eventually, the need to relieve himself drove him away from the window, and he padded down the hall until he found Brauer’s bathroom. He pissed for a long time, then washed his hands and face in the basin, trying again to ignore his reflection. He wondered how long it would take his hair to grow back. 

He didn’t have a toothbrush, so he rinsed his mouth out under the faucet. After a moment’s hesitation, he stepped into the shower, and stood beneath the warm water for a long time, his eyes closed and his head tipped back. It was very strange, to shower when and for how long he chose, in privacy, and with water which wasn’t either scalding hot or bitterly cold, or alternating sporadically between the two. Brauer’s soap smelled like sandalwood and orange blossom. Will scrubbed himself slowly, imaging he was washing the stink of that place from his skin, from beneath his nails, from inside his chest and his heart. 

He stepped out feeling like a new man. 

He didn’t want to put his old clothes back on, smelling of sweat and fear and decay, of last night’s vomit. He equally did not want to go through his lawyer’s things and borrow his clothes. Wrapping a towel around his waist, he had just started down the stairs when he heard a quiet knock on the front door.

He froze. The knocking came again, a little louder this time. After a long pause, he saw the letterbox open and a familiar female voice called through.

“Will? Are you there?”

Will hesitated, unsure if Brauer would approve, then moved to unfasten the bolt and open the door. Freddie stood on the step, holding a large canvas bag in one hand, and a small paper one in the other.

“How on earth did you find me?” Will said.

She flashed a coy smile. “Let’s just say I’m a good journalist and leave it at that. Can I come in?”

Will stepped aside and Freddie glided into the house as if she owned the place, depositing her bags on a coffee table in the den and beginning to rummage through the larger one. 

“I brought you some things I figured you’d need,” she said. “Call it a welcome-back-to-society kit. So, let’s see. Toothbrush, shaving kit, some assorted toiletries. Socks, underwear – I figured you for more of a boxers kind of guy. Couple of pairs of jeans. A few shirts. I guessed small.”

Will was standing silently, his mouth open but no words forthcoming. Freddie reached for the paper bag and withdrew a cardboard carton. A pleasant smell wafted from it, comforting and familiar.

“And I figured you might be hungry, but I didn’t know what food you brought a man after he almost died in the electric chair and then got released.” She shrugged. “So I brought you chicken soup.”

Will’s lips twitched into a hesitant smile. It felt so foreign on his face.

“You didn’t have to do this.”

“But I wanted to, so I did. Besides, it’s almost Christmas. So consider it an early Christmas present.”

She straightened up then, and eyed him timidly for a moment before pulling him into a tight hug. His towel almost slipped and she laughed. Her hair tickled his face. 

“I’m really glad you’re alive,” she murmured, her face pressed against his bare shoulder.

He chuckled, a low hum that Freddie could feel in her chest. “Yeah, me too.”

They broke apart and Freddie glanced up and down his slim frame, raising an eyebrow. “I think you should get dressed, and then we can talk.”

She handed Will a bundle of clothes and he stepped into another room to pull them on, returning to find her settled on a black leather couch. She patted the space beside her, and he sat. 

“Eat your soup. It’s good.” 

“I’m not really hungry.”

“I could count your ribs when we hugged, Will. Eat the damn soup.”

She handed him the carton and a plastic spoon, and waited until he had taken a few sips. 

"May I use the washroom?"

"It's upstairs."

"You better have finished that by the time I get back."

The soup was indeed good, and he found his appetite quite unexpectedly, putting the spoon aside and drinking it straight from its container. Freddie returned just as he was wiping his lips with a paper napkin.

“Thank you for the soup.”

“You are very welcome. So, how is life on the outside treating you?”

“It’s, uh…”

“Terrifying? Overwhelming?”

“That about sums it up. It doesn’t exactly feel real yet.”

“But it’s gotta be one hell of a step up from being inside.”

“Oh yeah. I could sleep on other people’s couches for the rest of my life and it would seem like the Four Seasons compared to that place.” 

“Well, my couch is always there if you need a place to crash. Anytime.”

Will managed another genuine smile, surprised by how easily they were coming in Freddie’s company. Talking to her was a lot easier than talking to Alana or Jack or even Brauer, even if those people were trying to help him; their words were always heavy with guilt and pain, their eyes filled with pity. It was suffocating. But not with Freddie.

Freddie didn’t treat him like her victim.

“How’s the book?” he said, clearing his throat and fidgeting with the cuffs of his new shirt. “Sorry it didn’t, uh, end with an exciting death scene.” 

“The ending we got was pretty explosive, don’t you think? Everybody loves a good true crime story ending in a murderer getting their just desserts of course, but an innocent man being spared in the nick of time, against all odds – do you have any idea how big this is going to be?”

“My lawyer says I’m going to put a face on the death penalty.”

“Probably. And on the cover of a best-selling book. It should be on shelves by the end of the week. I would say that I’ll send you a copy, but I imagine you won’t exactly be eager to relive that experience so soon.”

Will rubbed his wrists. Freddie had not failed to spot the bruises. 

“I already relive it every time I close my eyes.”

She reached over and put a hand on his knee. He shivered at the contact. “You’re a survivor,” she said. “You’re alive. Who’d have thought it, huh? Not me – I had to do extensive rewrites.”

He chuckled, still staring at his hands. “Sorry.”

“It’s a very sympathetic portrayal I think. You come off very well. And if you don’t have any objections, I’d like to release some of the tapes of our conversations to the press. Let people hear you talk about your experience in your own words.”

“Hmm.”

“Will, listen, I figure there’s a lawsuit in the works for you – your lawyer is hardly going to pass up the opportunity – but those things take years to push through the system. Releasing the tapes will make people angry on your behalf, and if public opinion is on your side, there’ll probably be an out of court settlement to avoid further embarrassment. Your head is understandably elsewhere right now, but as your friend I’m thinking about the money it’s going to take for you to get back on your feet. I know you don’t want to crash on people’s couches for the next five, six, however many years it takes for them to finally compensate you for destroying your life.”

“Not especially.”

“So let me release the tapes. Let every news network in the country play them on a loop so that the people can hear you talking quietly and oh, so heartbreakingly about the psychological torture you’ve been subjected to. It’ll send the book sales through the roof, and since I intend to share a portion of the royalties with you, I think you should really consider it.”

Will looked up, surprised. “You don’t… You don’t have to do that.”

“I was thinking thirty percent,” Freddie said. “But we can negotiate.”

“Thirty is… That’s very generous, thank you Freddie. But you don’t need to.”

“I want to, and it’s your story. Normally there’d be a fee involved for the interviews – we didn’t discuss that because neither of us expected you to be breathing by the time the book came out. But it should easily be enough for you to find somewhere to live, settle down. You won’t need to be dependent on anyone.”

“I don’t know what to say. Thank you.”

She winked. “Don’t mention it. But if someone buys the rights to make a movie, you’re not getting a penny of that. I’m only so generous.”

They laughed. Freddie glanced at her watch, and climbed to her feet, tucking her hair behind her ears.

“I’d better go – work to do. Will you call me if you need anything?”

“I will.”

“Are you sick of hugs already?” 

“Not even a little.”

“Then come here.”

He stood and they hugged again. Will found himself suddenly very frightened for her. When the book was published, and Dr Lecter saw what she’d written… She might as well paint a target on her head. 

“Please be careful. He might – he might try to…”

She patted her purse. “I carry a can of mace and a handgun everywhere I go. Let him try.”

Will frowned, wanting to say more, but Freddie silenced him with a quick peck on the cheek. 

“You know me,” she said, as she moved towards the door. She was smiling, but there was a darkness behind it. It was the same ruthlessness that had driven her to visit him in the first place, when she’d thought she might catch a murderer’s confession on tape, and got more than she bargained for. “You know I wouldn’t hesitate to put one between his eyes if he tried anything. Anything at all.”

“I’d rather you didn’t. I want to be the one to do it.”

She met his eye. “Please don’t do anything stupid. Don’t go near him. Promise me.”

“I don’t want to have to lie to you Freddie.”

“And I don’t want to be visiting you in prison again in a month. He slipped up once. They know now that you didn’t do it, and it’s only a matter of time before they prove that he did.”

Will’s stare was hard and unflinching. “Do you really believe that?”

She didn’t know what to say.

“I’m not going to kill him,” Will said, after a long pause. “I promise.”

“Just stay put, get some rest. Leave him well alone. I’ll visit again soon.”

“Be safe, Freddie,” Will said, very softly, moving to close the door. “Thank you for everything.”

The door clicked shut. Freddie stood on the step a moment, filled with unease. 

Something about Will’s tone had made it seem as though he was saying goodbye.

She lifted her hand to knock again, but knew in her heart that Will wouldn’t let her back in if he didn’t want to. She couldn’t babysit him. She just hoped he had the sense to leave well enough alone.

But, given what he’d been put through, she was worried that was no longer an option for him. 

*

On the other side of the door, Will stood quietly, listening for the sound of her car. He reached behind himself and, from the waistband of his new jeans, retrieved the gun he’d taken from Freddie’s purse when she'd left it beside him while using the bathroom. It was small, but it felt very heavy in his hands. He checked the magazine. The gun was fully loaded.

He only needed one bullet to get the job done.

Will listened until he was sure Freddie was gone, flexing the stiffness from his shoulders, his back. He felt bad stealing from her, and worse in knowing that he'd taken her method of protecting herself - but then again, he was going to make sure that she wouldn't need to. 

If she hadn't visited, if he hadn't known she'd be carrying a gun and seen his chance to steal it from her, he would have found another way. She had just made it easier for him. Some things were inevitable. This had to be done. He'd waited too long already. Three long, long years.

He glanced around the lawyer’s house, wondering if he would see it again. He supposed it didn’t really matter. He’d already lost everything. 

With a feeling of quiet calm, he tucked the pistol out of sight, slipped the little money he had into his pocket, and stepped out onto the street to hail a cab. 

He had one stop to make before he went through with it. One goodbye to say.

But it wouldn't stop him from keeping his appointment with Dr Lecter.


	23. Chapter 23

When she heard the news that night, about the new evidence, about the exoneration, Alana wept. She was ashamed that her tears were equal parts relief and guilt. 

She called the lawyer, but the shake in her voice gave her away; he didn’t think it would be wise for Will to stay with her. What he didn’t say, but which she knew to be true, was that Will wouldn’t want it, either. She understood. And with another stab of shame, she realised she was glad. She didn’t think she could bear to look at him.

To ease her mind and her conscience, she went to Hannibal. She had found over the course of their relationship that he had ways of making her forget. 

“I didn’t know,” she murmured, accepting the glass of beer that Hannibal offered her, her hand shaking. “I just… I didn’t listen. Why didn’t I listen?”

He turned his back to her a moment as he poured himself a glass of wine. She didn’t see the smile which crossed his lips.

“I am in the same position as you, Alana. Overjoyed that Will Graham has been proven innocent, and horrified at my lack of belief in him. It is an untenable position to live with, and yet we must live it nonetheless.”

“But he accused you,” Alana mumbled, dragging a hand down her tired face. “Of course you couldn’t believe him, unless you wanted to shoulder the guilt on his behalf. I don’t have an excuse. He told me time and time again that he was innocent, and time and time again I told him that I didn't believe him. I failed him.”

He brushed his knuckles across her cheek, kissing the top of her head. “In the roles of both psychiatrist and friend, words fail me in this situation. I would like to tell you that Will Graham will not hold it against you, but Will’s condition is so unstable that I do not feel comfortable predicting what he might feel with any degree of accuracy. I believe he will be angry, and he is entitled to that anger. It is our responsibility as his friends to bear the brunt of his anger, however painful it might be. But self-flagellation solves nothing.”

“It eases the guilt a little bit.”

Brushing her hair away from her face, Hannibal leaned in to kiss her cheek, along her jaw; she moaned and tipped her head back, and he kissed the pale skin of her exposed throat. 

He wondered idly if he’d have to kill her. Their trysts had been pleasant, and the taste of her guilt and shame and horror was sweeter than honey to his mouth. He didn’t think Will would be capable of turning her against him, however convincing he was. Innocent or not, Will’s accusations still sounded like the deranged rantings of a madman. But if Will made her choose between them, he was uncertain what she might do. If she chose him over Will, he thought he might kill her. Just to watch the horror of realisation dawn in her eyes. 

He thought it might even be possible to manipulate Will into killing her. Will might be angry enough. Crazy enough. Perhaps.

“Thank you,” Alana murmured, her eyes closed. “For being here. For me, and for him.”

Hannibal pressed another kiss to her neck, feeling the throb of her pulse beneath his lips. He smiled. “May I propose an alternative therapy to the self-flagellation? Perhaps something we could do in the bedroom.”

She tried to smile, and settled instead for simply nodding. They finished their drinks and retired to Hannibal’s comfortable bedroom, where they made love slowly, both thinking about other things, about the same thing. It took a long time for Alana to reach climax, and when she did, her cheeks were damp with silent tears. She lay awake for hours, even after Hannibal had fallen asleep, staring at the ceiling and thinking about the man she’d left to die. 

*

The press conference held by Will Graham’s lawyer the morning after Will’s release was watched by more than half the staff at the BAU, clustered in silence around the television in the break room. Leonard Brauer spoke for a long time, but the words he used and the tone of his voice were such that no one talked over him, no one’s attention drifted, even for a second. Whenever Brauer mentioned those who’d been present to witness on the night, Jack Crawford felt all the eyes in the room turn to him. He kept his own fixed on the screen, and as soon as it was over, he locked himself in his office.

He tried calling Brauer, was told by a secretary at the man’s firm that Counsellor Brauer was extremely busy but would get back to him as soon as possible, asked for Will Graham’s whereabouts and met a brick wall, and eventually gave up and slammed the phone back down. He was restless and unhappy. Of course Brauer’s office was being protective of their client’s privacy; the press would be circling like vultures, and Jack imagined they’d already deflected a dozen prying calls that day – some probably pretending to have come from his office. He knew how sneaky journalists could be when they smelled blood and wanted a taste. 

The only thing worse than not knowing where Will Graham was or how he was coping was the realisation that he had no idea what he would say to Will Graham if he actually saw him. If Will even wanted to speak to him, that was.

Hoping to take his mind off the train wreck he’d found himself in the middle of, Jack wandered into the lab and tried to listen to whatever Price and Zeller had to tell him about the bloated corpses they’d pulled out of a river earlier that week. The two almost immediately turned the conversation back to Will, still shocked almost into speechlessness by what they had found. 

“How could we have known?” Zeller said, more than once, his face troubled and pale. “I was sure he did it. I was so sure. How on earth could we have known?”

Jack tried to find something to say, and could not. After a while he excused himself and called Dr Bloom, but she was lecturing all day and her phone went straight to voicemail. He made a strong pot of coffee and poured himself a cup, carrying it back to his office where he could fret in private.

As he opened the door, he saw a small man sitting in front of his desk. The back of a bald head, sickly pale under the fluorescent lights.

The bottom dropped out of his stomach.

“Will?”

Will glanced over his shoulder. The dark circles beneath his eyes and the painful bruises under his chin only made the gauntness of his face more prominent. He looked like a corpse.

“Hi Jack,” he said, quietly.

Cautiously, Jack stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. Will went back to staring at his hands as the other man approached. They were shaking.

It didn’t feel right, Jack thought, to sit behind his desk with Will on the other side of it, as they’d sat dozens of times before, in another life, when Will was whole. But sitting beside Will didn’t feel right either. There was a gulf of distance between them which couldn’t be measured in wood, but it was a start. 

He sat in his normal chair, setting his coffee down and folding his hands on the desk.

“How did you get in here?” he said.

Will glanced up, his eyes wary as a recently kicked dog. “I’m a free man now, remember? I’m allowed to walk in and out of places without all the jewellery.”

“I know, I know,” Jack said, trying to keep his voice low and soothing. The twitchiness about Will worried him. Not for his own safety, but for fear of what Will might do to himself. “I meant… It doesn’t matter. It’s good to see you.”

“Is it?”

There was a long silence. Jack didn’t know what to say.

“You don’t need to be so tense,” Will muttered, running both hands over his head. The first hint of dark stubble was appearing again, and he found it comforting to touch. “I’m not here to hurt you. Turns out I’m not a murderer after all.”

“Will…”

“Don’t. Don’t bother, Jack. I don’t want to hear how you always believed the best in me – how you knew the truth would come out sooner or later. Spare me the lies. You thought I did it.”

Jack sighed, his heart very heavy. “Yeah, I did. Because over forty pieces of forensic and physical evidence told me that you did it. What was I supposed to think?”

Will’s eyes were hard and unyielding, even as they brimmed with tears. His voice, so low and shaky that it was barely audible, cut through the other man like a knife. 

“You were _supposed_ to protect me. It should never have been able to get that far. You said I wouldn’t get too close. Great fucking job you did.”

Jack put his head in his hands. “I’m sorry. I know it’s meaningless to you… But I’m sorrier than you’ll ever know.”

“Good thing I already said I forgave you,” Will muttered, rubbing the bruise under his jaw, twisting his head as he felt the phantom sensation of the belts tightening again. “I didn’t think I’d live very long past saying it… I cheated myself out of all the righteous anger I probably deserve. But it was said, and it was said sincerely, so I have to forgive you.”

Jack was silent, aware that Will had more to say but was struggling to find the words.

“I forgive you, Jack,” Will continued, slowly, quietly, choosing each word with immense care. “I forgive you for arresting me. I forgive you for shooting me. I forgive you for abandoning me to that place, for just… just _leaving me there_. I forgive you for all the cavity searches I’ve been subjected to over the years – for all the handcuffs I’ve had to wear, all the shitty prison food I’ve had to eat. I forgive you for each and every day I spent slowly rotting on death row, losing my fucking mind – that’s one thousand and sixty-six days if you weren’t counting, because I was, and believe me when I say that I remember every single fucking one of them.”

He paused, chewing his already bitten and bloody lower lip, his eyes boring into Jack’s.

“You made your point,” Jack said quietly, his voice strained. “Please. Stop.”

Will shook his head, agitated now. Tears dripped down his pallid cheeks. 

“Most of all, I forgive you for coming to watch me die,” he breathed. “I forgive you for making me do that. For making me say goodbye and letting them – letting them cut off my fucking hair, letting them – letting them d-do that to me, letting them take me there and-and-”

He broke off suddenly, drawing in an agonised, shuddering breath, his eyes wild. His fingers were hooked around the arms of his chair.

“Will-” Jack began.

“You let them kill me, Jack,” Will said, his voice breaking in the middle like a terrified child, and then he was weeping. “They t-took me there and they – they killed me, and you let them do it. You said I wouldn’t get too close and you - _you let them murder me._ ”

Jack felt a tear tremble down his own cheek. He stood up on shaking legs, and moved around the desk until he could crouch in front of Will. Will was hyperventilating, his posture rigid and his wide eyes fixed on something Jack couldn’t see, something awful. Jack was horrified.

“Will,” he said, as gently as he could manage. He put a hand on the man’s shoulder, feeling him flinch. “I think you’re having a psychotic episode. Listen to my voice. You’re safe. You’re free. You’re alive.”

Will’s eyes rolled in his skull. A shudder ran through him. 

“You’re alive,” Jack repeated, putting his other hand on Will’s knee. “You’re alive.”

Will’s red-rimmed eyes suddenly fixed on him. 

“I’m not alive,” he said, his voice cold. “Not anymore.”

Suddenly he sagged. He looked immensely tired. Jack wanted to hold him, to comfort him, as he would his dying wife. But he couldn’t bring himself to. And it hurt all the more knowing that will almost certainly wouldn’t want him to. 

As gently as he could, he pried Will’s stiff fingers free from the arms of the chair. Will drew them protectively towards his midriff, hunching over. Jack touched his arm. 

“I’m no expert, but I think you’re suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. You’ve been through something that… I can’t even imagine what you’ve been through. I want to help, and I’ll try to, but I don’t think I’m the person to help you. You need to seek professional help, Will.”

Will looked up at him, his eyes damp, wounded. “The last time you told me to seek professional help, my psychiatrist drugged me and forced an ear down my throat.”

Jack turned his face away, his guilt suffocating him. “We need to talk about that.”

“Why start now? What was it you said to me when you visited? _You’ve heard everything I have to say and it’s meaningless._ ”

“I was wrong. I should have listened to you.”

Will said nothing. He was waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

“We’ve… found out some things,” Jack began, faltering almost at once. He still could barely believe the words he was saying. After everything Beverly had told him. After… After seeing the pictures. “About Dr Lecter.”

He could feel Will’s gaze burning into him like a hot poker. “Don’t tell me you believe me now, Jack. Little late for that, isn’t it?”

Jack straightened up from his crouch and returned to his side of the desk. He picked up the phone with a trembling hand and dialled internally.

“Tell Katz I need to see her in my office. No, now.”

He hung up and drummed his fingers on the desk, still struggling to meet Will’s eye. A long silence passed between them, aching with regret and pain. Jack was hugely relieved when Beverly knocked on the door and stepped in.

“You wanted to see – Will!”

She hesitated in the doorway, hands thrust in the pockets of her lab coat. When she crossed the distance between them, she did so with the confidence of someone approaching a firing squad. Settling in the seat beside him, she swallowed and made herself look at him. 

“I don’t know what to say. There’s an apology in there somewhere. A completely inadequate apology.”

Will acknowledged this with a slight nod. His voice was husky. “It’s good to see you.”

“I can’t believe you’re out. I mean, it’s amazing. I can’t tell you how relieved I am.”

“That makes two of us.”

“You should see Price and Zeller before you leave. They found the evidence that exonerated you. They haven’t stopped talking about you for days. They feel incredibly guilty. We all do.”

“Beverly,” Jack interrupted. “We need to talk about Dr Lecter.”

Beverly paled. “Right. He doesn’t know yet?”

“I thought you should be the one to tell him.”

Beverly exhaled slowly. Will sat a little straighter, rubbing a hand over his head. 

“Did you go to his house?”

She nodded. “I did. Against my better judgement, I did what you asked me and I went. I broke half a dozen laws, and I picked the damn lock and broke into a man’s house.”

“And?”

“I looked in his kitchen, in his pantry. There was meat but… I mean it could have been anything. Then I found the entrance to his basement.”

An excruciating silence. Will looked between her and Jack.

“What did you find?”

Beverly wet her lips. “I found some things that a psychiatrist has no business keeping in his basement. But mostly…”

She hesitated, rubbing the back of her neck, unconsciously mirroring Will’s agitated fidgeting.

“Will, I found a human arm, cut off at the elbow. A girl’s arm. With the pinkie finger missing.”

The blank look on Will’s face told them everything. 

“Your lawyer didn’t tell you,” Beverly realised aloud. 

“What? What didn’t he tell me?”

“The evidence which cleared your name,” Jack said. “It… We found one of Abigail Hobbs’ fingers. Her pinkie finger. Caught on the end of a fly hook at a Chesapeake Ripper crime scene.”

Will’s lips parted, but no sound came out. He looked lost.

“Abigail Hobbs was still alive,” Jack said quietly. “At least, she was alive as recently as when her finger was cut off, which was within about forty-eight hours of when you, ah… When Price and Zeller found it. We don’t know her whereabouts.”

Will was suddenly on his feet. “Why haven’t you arrested him? He knows where she is, he knows-”

“Will,” Jack said, firmly. “Calm down and listen to me.”

“Why should I calm down, Jack? You’re giving him the benefit of the doubt? I didn’t get that. I walked into here willingly after you found her ear in my sink, and the next thing I knew I was on fucking death row.”

“Sit down and listen to me, will you?” Jack said, strained. 

Will glared down at him, quivering with anger, but he sat. Jack rubbed the bridge of his nose, his head aching. 

“Try to look at this from my position,” he said. “You and I both know that what Agent Katz did on your request was illegal. She conducted an illegal search of Dr Lecter’s property without a warrant, meaning everything she found was inadmissible in court. If I arrested Dr Lecter now, the case would be thrown out of court. He’d walk. Is that what you want?”

Will looked at Beverly. She was staring at her hands.

“So what are you going to do?”

Jack sighed. “There’s nothing we can do right now. We have nothing against Dr Lecter except your word and an admission which could land Agent Katz in a lot of trouble. No judge is going to issue a warrant. Not until we have something concrete. What we need to do now is wait, and watch, and not let him know that we’re on to him. Then we’ll figure out our next move. Understand?”

A silence. Then Will grabbed the coffee mug off Jack’s desk and hurled it at the wall. The mug exploded in a shower of cold coffee and porcelain. Jack and Beverly flinched and shielded their heads.

Will sat stiffly, breathing heavily. “Let me get this straight. Your plan is to sit tight and wait until he commits another murder, and then _hope_ that he happens to leave some evidence behind. Is that the plan?”

“We don’t have another choice,” Jack said. “If we can’t obtain evidence legally, it’ll never hold up in court, and you know as well as I do that if we let him go once, we’ll never get close to catching him again. At least now we have the upper hand – he doesn’t know we’re on to him. But I’m just as frustrated as you are.”

“Are you? Have you spent the last three years lying awake in your cell at night thinking about the man who destroyed your life? You have no concept of how frustrated I am.”

“Will, he cut off her arm,” Beverly said, quietly. “He didn’t need to. The finger alone exonerated you. But he cut off her arm like he cut off Miriam Lass’s, and he probably did it for the same reason – to poke us with it. He’s made us look stupid for what happened to you, and now he’s looking to drive the point home. But we can be ready for him. Whatever he does with that arm - and he'll do it soon, you know he will - we’ll be watching and waiting. And hopefully we can catch him red-handed. Literally.”

Will’s lip was trembling as he glared first at Beverly, then Jack. “She might still be alive, with him slowly carving pieces off her to taunt you with, and you’re just going to wait and see. How many cuts will he have to make until you do something? How many bodies does he have to add to his resume? I almost made the list – which one of you do you think will be next? Because he isn’t going to stop – he isn’t ever going to stop.”

“We’re doing everything we can,” Jack murmured. “We’re going to do this by the book, and he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison. Maybe he'll get the needle; that seems like poetic justice at this point, don't you think? But if we rush into it, the conviction won’t stick; he’ll walk, and then he'll disappear. I know it’s hard to hear, but you need to have a little faith. Just wait.”

Will stood up, wringing his hands together. “Fine. Whatever you say. I’ve had plenty of practice at waiting lately.”

“What you need to concentrate on now is taking care of yourself,” Jack said, standing as well. “I really think you should talk to someone. Dr Bloom will be out of lectures soon. I know she’ll want to see you. She could at least prescribe something to help you sleep.”

Will offered a tight smile. “How do you sleep, Jack? I’m doing alright. My conscience is clear.”

Jack’s eyes flickered down to the desk. “I deserved that. But I’m trying my best to make amends. Do you have a place to stay?”

“My lawyer is putting me up some place. He’ll wonder where I am. I need to go now. I don’t know why I came. I just wanted to say thank you to Bev…”

“I did everything I could, Will,” Beverly said, with a hopeless shrug. “It’s still more than we had on him a week ago. We’re gonna get him.”

“Mmm,” Will said, without commitment. 

He turned to leave, then stopped.

“When you see Alana… Tell her that I appreciate her looking after Winston.”

“She’ll want to see you, Will. You can tell her yourself.”

Will nodded, his eyes distant. “Yeah. Maybe. Goodbye, Jack. Beverly.”

He walked out, leaving the two quiet and uneasy. Beverly wanted to follow, but she resisted. He needed some time to breathe. 

Will made his way towards the exit, keeping his head down. He was almost out when he heard Zeller’s voice.

“Will? Oh my god.”

Will froze, then turned back, reluctantly. Zeller stood a few metres away, a deer-in-headlights look plastered across his face. He looked Will up and down, taking in his shaven head, his clothes hanging off him, and had to look away. 

A beat of silence. 

“Will… Fuck.” The man dragged his hands down his face, letting out a shaky breath. “I owe you an apology.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“I thought you were a killer. Didn’t want to hear anything else. So wouldn’t consider anything else.”

“The evidence was compelling.”

“But you almost died. I said… Jesus… I said that you deserved to fry. How am I supposed to live with myself, knowing I said that?”

Will gave him a wan smile. “A lot of people said that. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

Zeller hesitated, then offered his hand. Will shook it tentatively. Zeller seemed relieved. 

“I am really glad to see you out,” he said, clapping Will on the shoulder. “Are you, you know, doing alright? Is that a stupid question?”

Will nodded, the smile slipping off his face. “Everything’s fine. It’ll all be finished with soon.”

And without another word, he turned and strode out of the building, leaving Zeller confused and alone in the corridor. 

*

Brauer had had a long day, and it was about to get even longer. 

The morning’s press conference had gone better than he could have hoped. The liberal media loved him. The exoneration of Will Graham was dominating the news, accompanied by what little footage they had of Will – shots of him being taken from the courthouse after his trial, healthy and whole and still lucid enough to look stunned, juxtaposed with footage of him huddled in Brauer’s car as they left the prison the previous night, pale and bald and so very thin, a haunted look in his wide horrified eyes.

Governor Hargrave appeared to be hiding in his office, and was refusing to make any statements to the press until ‘all the facts have been ironed out’. Brauer had called his office personally and cordially invited the man to have a live debate with him about the death penalty on air, an event he thought as likely as pigs sprouting wings, though he’d have sold his soul to make it happen. The attorney general’s office was being equally coy. The silence from the other side was the best thing that could have happened – it made everyone involved look guilty as hell, and with no counter arguments forthcoming, Brauer’s speech on the steps of his office was running unopposed across the networks. He was delighted.

They weren’t going to let anyone forget over the days to follow. A secretary at the firm was in the process of collating all the dozens of photographs they had of Will, the pictures Brauer had taken of him over the years to document his decline; pictures of him sitting hunched in his cell and behind the scuffed reinforced glass in the visitation room, small and gaunt in his ugly jumpsuit, his eyes gradually becoming wearier and wearier as the years dragged on. And most damning of all, a picture of Will taken the day after the botched execution attempt, a profile shot with his bald head tilted back to show off the bruises, his eyes still red from crying. Brauer had paid a guard fifty bucks to take the picture for him while the bruises were still good and fresh; Will had been so out of it that he hadn’t even questioned what they were doing. They’d release the photos in a few days, whenever the Governor crawled out of the hole he was hiding in and tried to claim the system worked. That picture alone was worth a thousand words. 

When he’d answered the reporters’ questions and they’d left him alone, Brauer had gone back into his office and laid down the groundwork for what would become his client’s lawsuit. He wanted it filed by the end of the week, while the press were still circling like vultures and the powers that be might prefer to quietly settle out of court to avoid the shit-show of a trial. Brauer knew he’d win if they took it to trial, and he was almost disappointed that he might never get the chance to fight Will’s case in front of a judge again, but he knew how long these things usually took to pay out. Will didn’t have a home. Winning a major lawsuit three or four or ten years down the line was not going to help him any in the present.

Just after noon, Brauer called his house from the office. He’d left a note for Will telling him to rest, that he’d be back late in the afternoon, and that Will could help himself to anything he needed – food, clothes, it didn’t matter – as well as leaving a number that Will could reach him on. But he wanted to check in nonetheless. 

There was no answer at his home. He assumed Will was probably still sleeping, or just avoiding the phone. Brauer didn’t blame him. His phone at the office had not stopped ringing all morning. He was grateful that he’d smashed his cell. If the press got hold of his home number, he’d rip the damn thing from the wall. 

Brauer wasn’t worried about Will, at least no more than usual. He’d quietly hidden his razor blades and kitchen knives on his way out that morning, uneasy by the thought that Will might try to hurt himself. The thought that Will might leave did not even cross his mind. There was, after all, nowhere else for him to go.

He could not have known that Will was at that moment sitting in Jack Crawford’s office, giving up on his last hope of ending this without bloodshed. Nor what he was planning.

Around one, Brauer left the office and drove to find a clothing store in town. He picked out half a dozen shirts and a few pairs of pants he thought the man wouldn’t hate, a pack of underwear, socks, feeling like he was shopping for a son he’d never had. It was an odd feeling. When he’d first accepted Will’s case, he could never have imagined it would come to this. 

Sitting alone in his car afterwards with the bag of clothes on the passenger seat, he allowed himself a minute to breathe. 

Will was free. That was all that mattered. But Brauer couldn’t stop his hands from shaking.

He could not escape the knowledge that Will had been damaged in a way that probably could never be fixed. He’d win his lawsuit and try to rebuild his life, but no amount of money was going to give him back the part of himself that he’d lost on death row. He was broken. And Brauer couldn’t help him. 

Frustrated with himself, the lawyer wiped a stray tear from his cheek with the heel of his palm, started the engine, and headed home.

He knew something was wrong the moment he stepped through the door, though he couldn’t explain why. Setting his bag down in the hall, he peered into the den, finding a pile of clothes he didn’t recognise on the coffee table beside an empty container of soup. 

“Will?”

There was no answer. Brauer climbed the stairs, his heart in his throat. The door to the spare room was ajar; the room was empty. 

The bathroom door was open a fraction. Brauer moved toward it with leaden feet and pushed it open slowly, suddenly terrified that he might find Will dead in the bathtub with his wrists or his throat slit. He sagged with relief when he was proven wrong.

“Will?” he called again, louder, already sure that Will was not in the house. 

After a moment, he went to find the phone and dialled Alana Bloom’s number.

“Is Will with you?”

“I’ve been lecturing all day. I haven’t seen him. He isn’t with you?”

“He was staying at my house but he’s gone.”

Alana was silent a moment. “I’m coming over. He can’t have gone far. Call Jack.”

She hung up. Brauer found Crawford’s number and dialled.

“Counsellor Brauer, how can I help?”

“Have you seen Will today? We can’t find him.”

“He was here,” Jack said, sounding concerned. “About… Must be two hours ago now. He wanted to speak to Agent Katz.”

“He’s not there now? You’re sure?”

“Positive. He said he had to go, that you’d be wondering where he was.”

Brauer cursed under his breath. “Did he say anything else? What did you talk about?”

A pause on Crawford’s end. “It’s an open investigation, I can’t-”

“What the fuck did you say to him?” Brauer snapped.

“We’ve opened an investigation into Dr Lecter,” Jack said, slowly. “It’s not official yet – we don’t have the evidence to back it up – but we’re laying the groundwork for a case against him. It’s going to take time. Will was… frustrated.”

“Let me check that I understand you, Agent Crawford. You talked to my fragile and delusional client about an open investigation into the man he believes framed him for murder, and then you let him leave in an agitated state with no idea where he was heading? Is that about right?”

“What were we supposed to do? He’s a free man now. He can go wherever he wants.”

Brauer dragged a hand down his face. “If he comes back, will you call me immediately?”

“Of course.”

Brauer hung up the phone. His hand had barely left the receiver when it began to ring.

“Jack?”

“Is this Counsellor Brauer?” said a female voice, speaking fast.

“Yes, who is this?”

“I’m Freddie Lound, I-”

“I know who you are, Ms Lounds, and my client is not speaking to the press at this-”

“He’s got a gun!” Freddie interrupted. “I dropped by your house this morning to bring him some clothes, and Will stole my gun from my purse. I think he plans to hurt Dr Lecter.”

Brauer closed his eyes, his worst fears crystallising in his mind.

“I don’t think he wants to hurt him,” he said, his mouth very dry. “He’s upset, and he’s not thinking straight. He just wants his life back, and in his mind, Dr Lecter is the reason it was taken from him. If he finds him…”

Freddie swallowed, fearing the same thing.

“If Will finds Hannibal, he’ll kill him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was probably a bit long. I just wanted to get some exposition out of the way before we move onto the encounter we've all been waiting for... 
> 
> I think there are two, possibly three chapters to go.
> 
> One update! I mentioned a while back I think that I was working on a few little illustrations to accompany this fic. The first is now up - it accompanies Chapter 17. I'm hoping to do one for most chapters and I will have a few more up really soon (the chapter 3 illustration is now up as well!).
> 
> A few of your amazing people have said that you've actually gone back and read the whole thing again from the start - wow. That means so much to me, so thank you guys. I wanted to draw a few little things as a thank you to all the wonderful people who have been following this for some time, so I hope you like them and yeah we'll have more posted shortly.
> 
> As always, thank you all for reading! Will we have a happy ending? We'll have to wait and see...


	24. Chapter 24

He had appointments until one-thirty. He had been tempted to cancel, but maintaining the illusion of normality was important at this time. Will might be crazy, but people would be more tempted to listen to him now they knew the truth about him. They’d listen out of pity, and guilt.

Dr Lecter finished his last appointment promptly, though the patient was in a bad state and not overly enthused to leave. He spent a few minutes putting his notes in order, then locked up the office and drove home. Alana’s last lecture would finish at two, and she would be coming over soon after. She wanted to discuss how they could best help Will to put his life back together. He’d promised to cook for her.

The district attorney’s heart was marinating in his fridge. 

As he stepped from his car outside his home, Dr Lecter considered what was to be done about Alana. It would be preferable not to have to kill her; Dr Lecter respected her professionally, and enjoyed her company personally. Yet his feelings towards her were little more than those which a man might harbour for an animal he had taken in from the cold. He could like the creature, even feel affection for it. But, should the day come that the animal had to be put down, life would continue as if uninterrupted in its absence. 

Alana was a nice pet, but even nice pets must die when the time comes. 

Will, though. Will was more complicated. Dr Lecter was still uncertain what to do about that situation, and that uncertainty excited him a great deal. He could not deny that allowing the justice system to run its course and claim Will as its tragic casualty would have made his own life easier; even so, irrational as it was, he was glad that Will had survived, come what may. 

The game was all the more interesting with a worthwhile contender, now free to make his move. 

The day was cold and clear, the biting wind carrying notes of pine and, distantly, of the ocean. Dr Lecter paused as he approached his home to tilt his head back and admire the sky, feel the chill of the breeze on his face. He wondered how many times Will had done the same since his release. How gratifying it must feel, after so long denied that simple pleasure. 

He was lost in thought as he flipped through his keys on the stoop, humming a few notes of a half-remembered aria. 

As he crossed the threshold, he froze, catching the unfamiliar scent. A deep inhale, his eyes falling closed. The door clicked shut behind him, unnoticed. 

Sandalwood and orange blossom. Hints of lavender and liquid amber. Expensive, but not to a degree which was showy. 

Dr Lecter opened his eyes, momentarily confused. He was certain he must be mistaken. It was a fougère fragrance he associated strongly with Leonard Brauer. The man had fine taste in soap.

But Counsellor Brauer would not be in his house. 

And then he understood. 

“Hello Will,” he called, removing his topcoat with its dusting of snow and hanging it in the entryway. “I know you’re here. You may as well come out.”

A silence. Then Will stepped out from the kitchen, his head bent but his eyes fixed on Hannibal. His shoulders were tight, his arms were held stiffly at his sides. In a trembling hand, he held Freddie’s gun. 

“Hello Dr Lecter,” he said, very quietly. 

Hannibal offered a minute smile. He set his keys down on a table in the entryway, observing Will’s twitch at the movement. He moved his hands slowly back to his sides, palms up, careful not to startle Will. 

“You should have come by the office. I kept your regular slot open for you.”

A silence. Hannibal slipped his hands into his pockets, his posture relaxed, the antithesis of Will’s. 

“But of course, you wanted to make an entrance,” he continued. “You succeeded. I am startled and at your mercy.”

Still, Will said nothing. He had barely moved a muscle since stepping into the room. Hannibal’s eyes flicked down to the gun in his hand. He palmed the object in his pocket, feeling the weight and coolness of the blade. He had been carrying it since Will got out.

If he had to kill Will and disappear, so be it. Too swift an ending for Dr Lecter’s liking, and an unfortunate fate for dear Will after all he’d been through… But how upset Jack Crawford would be. How foolish the sanctimonious FBI would look, if the man they wrongly accused was spared a grisly end in one of their institutions only to perish at the hands of the very man he had accused from the start, and been ignored. What tragic irony. Beautiful. It was not the ending he would prefer, but a satisfying conclusion nonetheless.

Besides. Will was known to be unstable and quite probably insane. Armed with a stolen gun, having broken into Dr Lecter’s home… Hannibal was well within his rights to kill him. A claim of self-defence would not be held up to undue interrogation. Let Will become a victim of circumstance and a broken system. Dr Lecter could not be held accountable. 

Yet he had to be careful. Will had almost killed him once. He might not hesitate to pull the trigger a second time. 

“Are you planning to shoot me, Will?” he said. “Shoot me, and become the murderer they always believed you were. End up back in that place, where not even Counsellor Brauer could save you. You’ll be back before Christmas. Is that what you want?”

A long pause. Then Will’s expressionless face split into a humourless smile. He rubbed the back of his neck, a gruff chuckle escaping him. 

“That would be something, wouldn’t it? You frame me for murder, and I get sent to death row. I kill you, and I get sent right back. I can’t win, can I? The game was always rigged against me. I see that now. I see what I am to you. The scales have fallen from my eyes…”

“You always could see me. As I see you. The man I see standing before me now is not a killer, Will.”

“That was the opinion of the Attorney General’s office when they issued my full exoneration along with a stilted apology, yes,” Will muttered, staring down at the gun in his hand. “But I’m not so sure anymore that they’re right. I spent years thinking that I might have killed her. I… I imagined it every time I closed my eyes. I killed her over and over in my mind, and by the end it didn’t matter whether or not I’d actually done it, because I _felt_ like that I’d done it either way. You did that to me… To her…”

Hannibal said nothing. He was very aware of the chink in Will’s armour that was Abigail Hobbs. And he alone knew what had become of her. 

He would tell Will when the time was right. Perhaps to save himself from a bullet. Perhaps as he watched Will bleed out on his floor. Just to twist the knife a little deeper.

“But you didn’t kill her,” he affirmed. “You know that now. You may have killed her father, but you did so to save her life. The man who shot Garrett Jacob Hobbs would not kill another man in cold blood. You killed Hobbs because it was righteous.”

Will nodded, looking thoughtful. His words were slow and measured.

“Yes. It was. I’ve had plenty of time to ruminate on who I was before I was inmate #04042013… I know who I was. Three years is a lot of time for soul-searching. But while I was lying in my cell during those last few weeks in prison, listening to them testing the apparatus down the hall that would be used to kill me, I thought of you, Dr Lecter. I thought of our last conversation before my arrest, in the kitchen where I killed Hobbs. Do you recall?”

A twitch of Hannibal’s lips. “I recall it clearly. The situation feels startlingly familiar. You told me that you knew who you were. You questioned who I was. You pointed a gun at me.”

Will raised the gun and steadied it at Hannibal. “Like this?”

Another twitch of lips, his eyes cold as they flicked up from the barrel of the gun to examine Will’s face. “Are we going to re-enact the crime?”

Will smiled then, a thin, grimacing smile, his lips pressed tight together. “I should have killed you in that kitchen. I thought about it every single day that I spent on death row. If I had died in that place, that would have been my biggest regret. That I didn’t take you down with me. And now that I’m out, everybody’s talking about rebuilding my life… When all I can think about doing is rectifying that mistake. Even if it costs me my freedom.”

He hesitated, his lip quivering, before letting out a quiet laugh. It was almost a sob.

“I’d rather die than go back to that place, Hannibal. I don’t think my sanity could stand up to another hour in there. In all the times I imagined this moment, I never thought about what would happen to me afterwards, but I understand now. I was never going to get out of this. There is no happy ending for me. You saw to that.”

He closed his eyes, drawing in a shuddering breath. When he spoke again, his voice was hollow.

“I’ll shoot you dead, then put a bullet through my head. Then it will be over. Maybe then I can finally sleep.” 

A slight pause, Will's words hanging heavy in the air between them. 

“I would prefer this to end differently, and not just for my own sake,” Hannibal said, his tone mild. “It might surprise you to hear it, but I am delighted to see you standing before me as a free man. I always knew that you would persevere. I had great faith in you.”

“You’re a fucking liar,” Will muttered, his finger tight on the trigger. “You would have watched me die without batting an eye. You would have enjoyed it.”

“Perhaps,” Hannibal conceded. “But you cannot deny that it was I who set you free. Not the efforts of your poor long-suffering lawyer. Not the people who you would call friends, who had long since abandoned you. I alone set you free.”

“You left it up to chance. I almost _died_. You don’t get to claim that as something good you did for me.”

“I left it up to fate,” Hannibal said. “My compassion for you is an inconvenience, Will. I would have benefited greatly from your death. But still I gave you a chance, and I don’t regret that decision. Even in the knowledge that you might kill me for that compassion.”

“There was nothing compassionate about what you did to me. You put me through hell. You left me to rot, you… You made me sit there and wait for my _death_. I almost lost my mind. I… I… I _wanted_ to die. I wanted to end my own life. How can you stand there and call that _compassionate_?”

Hannibal did not flinch at the vitriol in Will’s words. Despite the gun in Will’s hand and the righteous anger in his eyes, the cracks in his psyche were devastatingly visible. If he would not come around, he would not be difficult to break. 

He tightened his grip on the handle of the knife in his pocket. 

“Compassion can come in the form of cruelty, just as love is not exclusive from pain. The parent who sends a child to their room does so not to aggrieve them unnecessarily, but so that they might learn from their mistakes.”

Will’s lips twisted into something close to a grin, but it was laced with such pain that a man more burdened with guilt than Dr Lecter would have fallen to his knees upon seeing it, and wept for forgiveness. The strain of every tortuous day Will had spent on death row was evident behind that smile. The fear and the loneliness, the horror of his visit to the death chamber; it all lurked in the shadows which pooled in the lines and hollows of his face. 

“Oh, is that what you did to me?” he whispered. “You sent me to my room to teach me a lesson? Only the room was a cell on death row and the lesson was – what? Not to trust you? Well, I guess I learned that lesson the hard way.”

Hannibal’s gaze was steady and calm. “I did what I truly believed would be best for you. I have always wanted what is best for you.”

Another haunting flash of that grin. “I am genuinely curious how you can justify this position. I was your _patsy_ , Dr Lecter; nothing more. You did what you did to me because I saw what you were, because I got too close. You threw me under the bus to save your own skin, and in the process you made sure that nobody would believe me. But please, enlighten me as to your best intentions in trying to send me to the chair.”

“You were being used, Will. Jack Crawford was using you, and had no intention of stopping. You know yourself that sooner or later you would have snapped. Perhaps you would have hurt someone, perhaps you would have hurt yourself. You were hurtling towards a life spent in a padded cell-”

“So you decided a solitary confinement cell would be preferable? How considerate.”

“Will, you needed some time and some distance. To see what had been done to you, to make sense of who you were. At a time when other men would fear their isolation, yours had become understandable to you. You needed space to scrape out the remnants of the killers living inside your head, the killers that Jack Crawford had exposed you to. They were poisoning you.”

“You understand the irony of sending me to a place whose sole inhabitants were killers, right?” Will spat. “Who do you think my neighbours were? None of them were there for jaywalking.”

“And yet you said it yourself. What I gave you was solitary confinement. You were surrounded by killers, and yet entirely isolated from them. Tell me, Will. Could you finally breathe easily, knowing that the person in that cell was indeed Will Graham, and not Garrett Jacob Hobbs, or the Chesapeake Ripper, or any of the other monsters Jack Crawford had sent you after?”

“I was suffocating,” Will said, his voice a hollow growl. “Not a single breath in that place was easy for me. Not for three long years.”

Hannibal raised an eyebrow. “I don’t believe that. The man standing in front of me is undeniably Will Graham. Not a killer, as Jack was so easy to believe. Not a madman, as Alana thought, and still thinks. The man they were turning you into died in that place, Will. He died, and you were born again. You are free now, in every sense. Are you going to throw that away?”

Will’s steady grip on his gun wavered. He swallowed, glanced away. He caught his own reflection in a tall mirror hung on the far wall, and his eyes filled with sadness. 

“What is there to throw away?” he murmured, his voice barely rising above a whisper. “You broke me.”

“You were already broken,” Hannibal replied, softly. He slipped the knife free from his pocket while Will was distracted. “Jack Crawford was going to shatter you beyond repair, and then nobody could have saved you. I merely put you out of commission until such a time that you might put yourself back together again. I am remarkably proud of you, Will. You are stronger than any of them believed. You have endured so much. And most remarkable of all, after suffering the humiliation and abandonment your friends put you through, you still see fit to forgive them. Is it too much to hope that one day you might be able to understand the good intentions behind what I did to you, and forgive me also?”

“They apologised,” Will said, his eyes still fixed on his reflection. “And they meant it. That’s more than you’ve done.”

The hand holding the gun had dropped several inches. It was no longer pointed at Dr Lecter’s head. He stroked the blade of the knife. A clean throw was all it would take. Between the eyes. 

Or through the heart. 

“I’m sorry, Will. I’m sorry to have put you through that. Sorry that it had to end this way.”

Will turned his head back to look at Hannibal just as Hannibal lifted the knife. 

A gunshot rang out.

And then a second.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I won't be so cruel as to end it there. There is another chapter to come. But what will happen, I will not say. Can this have a happy ending?
> 
> Chapters 3, 15 and 17 are now accompanied by illustrations. I hope to have more up soon, and intend to illustrate the entire story if I can. It is my baby after all, and I'm very fond of it. 
> 
> Your support continues to mean the world to me.


	25. Chapter 25

When they made the film adaptation of ‘The Last Ninety Seconds’, based on Freddie Lounds’ bestselling book of the same name as well as her follow-up interviews, they shot the scene of Dr Lecter’s downfall in such a way as to infuse it with an almost ethereal elegance and fatal beauty. This was inspired almost entirely by Freddie Lounds’ lavish description of what happened in Dr Lecter’s home that afternoon, despite the fact that Miss Lounds was not present. Many of the details were wildly inaccurate. It didn’t matter. Will Graham was too reclusive to bother publicly correcting her, and Dr Lecter was not in any position to do so. 

Will never saw the film, having lived it one time too many already. Had he watched it, he would have found it in stark contrast to how he remembered the events of that day.   
Freddie Lounds, in a frenzy of soaring rhetoric and hyperbole, framed it like the fall of a vengeful god, or even Lucifer himself. 

But to Will, it was the most human moment in the world.

*

The first bullet caught Dr Lecter in the right shoulder, sending him staggering back several paces. His face betrayed his surprise and guilt, like a child caught in a lie. The knife dropped from his hand and clattered across the floor. 

“You dropped your apology,” Will muttered, stepping forward to kick the knife far out of reach. 

Hannibal stood hunched against the wall, breathing heavily, his hand pressed against the seeping wound, his eyes feral and locked on Will’s. Will levelled the gun at him again, his attention now directed firmly back at Hannibal. 

“I bet you thought my reflexes had dulled in prison,” he said, with a wry smile. “I did warn you. I’ve been thinking about killing you for three long years. So I kept myself sharp. I wasn’t going to let you go a second time.”

Hannibal exhaled sharply through his teeth. His shirt was becoming saturated with blood.

“I wasn’t going to kill you,” he said, tersely. “I wanted to disarm you. So we could sit down and have a real discussion, without a gun pointed at my head. There is a way out of this for you, and I only want to help you, Will.”

Will offered another twisted, tight-lipped smile. “I don’t believe you.”

Hannibal watched him with narrowed, calculating eyes. “And I don’t believe you will kill me. That’s not who you are.”

A pause, then Will’s smile widened into a grin, and it was genuine now. Dr Lecter’s breath caught in his throat as he realised the truth. Will was not going to let himself be distracted or swayed again. He was devastatingly sure of himself, and he had won.

“You’re right. I’m not going to kill you, Dr Lecter,” Will said. “There are worse fates than death. Far worse. I know that now. Try incarceration for starters. Trying living in a box, getting manhandled by guards who spit in your food when they’re not spitting in your face. Not that it can make the food taste any worse. They’ll strip you of your good clothes and your fine cologne. You’ll wear what you’re given, and shower when they tell you to. You’ll have nothing left but indignity to look forward to. And if they decide to kill you at the end of it… Well, that’s their business. But I’m not giving you the easy out of a bullet. I’m going to make you wait for it, like you did to me, and I hope you lose your fucking mind in the process.”

Will paused, rubbing the bruises under his chin, shivering at the touch.

“And remember your own logic. I guess I’m doing this out of my overflowing _compassion_ for you.”

Dr Lecter’s tongue crept out to wet his lips. He glanced in the direction of the knife, but it was far out of reach. 

If he could lure Will close enough, there was a chance he could get the gun out of his hands. Dr Lecter was injured, but Will was weak – the man was practically malnourished. It was a risk, but one that was looking increasingly necessary to make. 

“Are you really going to hand me over to the authorities?” he said, straightening up slightly, his hair falling askew over his eyes. “The same people whose incompetence sent you away? I misjudged you. I believed you would want to finish this on your own terms.”

“That’s what I’m doing.”

“But you want to hurt me. I can see it in your eyes.”

Will chuckled. “Oh, I didn’t say I wasn’t going to hurt you first.”

And before Hannibal could say another word, Will shot him in the kneecap. 

*

On the floor above, someone stirred at the sound, rousing from a deep, deep sleep. 

*

Hannibal had crumpled to the ground, clutching his leg. Will stood over him, not close enough to be grabbed, watching him writhe. He was no longer smiling. His eyes were hard. 

“You should have let me die,” he said. “I told you there would be a reckoning.”

“I didn’t want… to kill you,” Hannibal grunted. He was sweating, his teeth gritted. He was accustomed to pain, but Will had taken him by surprise. Had his mind not been elsewhere, he would have been impressed. “I wanted you to see… see… who you were. We are so very much alike. If only you’d accept… your true nature. You could be happy.”

“Oh, I’m happier right now than I’ve been in years.”

“But you could be… so much more. You could become… become…”

“Like you,” Will finished. “Yeah. I could. But I’m not going to let that happen. Did you think three years believing I was a killer would turn me into one? Or did you think I’d be so fucking grateful when I got out that I’d do anything you said? Which is it? Maybe you thought I’d just go insane, right?”

Hannibal did not respond, but his eyes never left Will’s face.

“Well, you had your fun. I almost went insane in there,” Will said. “Or maybe I went all the way. It’s hard to say. But guess what. Now it’s your turn.”

A long silence. Then Hannibal smiled. His eyes were cold. 

“You shot me in my own home, Will. In the eyes of the law, I am the victim here. Perhaps they’ll take pity on you and refrain from sending you back to prison, but nobody will believe your wild claims about me. I wouldn’t be surprised to see you in a padded cell before long.”

Will chuckled. “You planned it all so perfectly, didn’t you? Made sure nobody would believe me… Except somebody did believe me. Or maybe she was just taking pity on me. But she came into your home, Hannibal, while you were there to watch me die. She found what you’ve been hiding in your basement. She told Jack. They know, Hannibal. They know everything.”

“I would expect the FBI to be more efficient in enforcing justice than sending one unstable former consultant to take me down with a stolen gun. Unless your friend – Agent Katz, I presume – entered my home without due cause, which I suspect is the case. Anything she found would be inadmissible in court. Did you think coming here and shooting me in my own home unprovoked would give the FBI cause to conduct a legal search?”

Will shook his head. “No. But it gives local PD cause to enter your home. And if they were to, say, find incriminating evidence against you just lying out in plain sight… Well, that would be enough for a judge to grant a warrant allowing them to search the rest of the house, don’t you think?”

He watched Dr Lecter’s face fall as the man realised what he’d done. He smiled.

“Go into the kitchen,” he said. “Go find what I’ve left out for you. I found it in your basement.”

Hannibal was breathing heavily through his nose, his face frozen in an expression of barely contained malice. He did not move.

“Don’t be shy,” Will said. “It might be the last chance you ever get to see your kitchen again.”

“You shot me in the knee,” Hannibal growled. “I can’t walk.”

“Then crawl,” Will snapped, jerking the gun at him. “Unless you want me to shoot out the other knee as well. I don’t care if I cripple you. You won’t need to walk much where you’re going.”

A moment’s silence, then Dr Lecter rolled slowly onto his side and began to crawl, dragging himself across the floor with his elbows. He left a red smear behind him on the polished wood as he went, like the slime trail from a snail. Will found considered it a very pleasant sight. He followed the crawling man at a leisurely pace, watching the sweat drip from his forehead, enjoying the grunts of effort and pain. He felt better than he had in years.

The few metres between the entranceway and the kitchen took a very long time. Hannibal saw what Will had done, and absorbed it with silent, simmering resignation to his fate. He had known this day might come. Will had been a worthwhile opponent after all. 

“I’m not sure how much you can see from down there, but rest assured, there’s enough here to catch the attention of even the slowest cop,” Will said, examining the trap he’d laid out – the knives and tools he’d taken from the basement, the heart he’d found in the fridge… the arm. Her arm. “It’s not an orgy of evidence. Just enough to warrant a search. I left the basement door open so it won’t take them long to find the rest of it. There’s enough in there to convict you ten times over. But you already know that.”

Hannibal said nothing, glaring up at him. Faintly, far in the distance but enclosing, came the sound of sirens.

Will smiled. “That’ll be your ride. They think I came here to kill you, so if you’re very lucky, there’ll be an ambulance coming as well. We wouldn’t want you to bleed to death on the way to prison, now would we?”

He glanced at the arm lying on the counter, the skin blueish and cold. His face fell. All the bravado left him; he slumped, exhausted. 

“There’s one thing I need to know. Please. Tell me it was quick. Tell me she didn’t suffer.”

The sirens screamed in the distance. Hannibal watched Will with cold appraisal.

“See for yourself. She’s upstairs.”

He watched a dozen emotions flash across Will’s face, before the man locked it down. But still his voice shook when he asked: “Is she… Is she dead?”

“No. A little short in the sleeve perhaps. But very much alive.”

“You’re lying. Bev would have found her.”

“She wasn’t here when Agent Katz broke into my home. I brought her back here for you. A gift. To celebrate your release.”

Will stared down at him. Realisation sunk in. 

“You just wanted to taunt me with her. Dangle her just out of reach… How many more pieces of her would you have cut off before you stopped?”

Hannibal’s lips twitched. “Go see for yourself.”

The sirens were almost upon them; it would not be long now. Will glanced at the gun in his hand. At the blood trail leading from the front door. 

He knew how this looked. He knew they would arrest him as soon as they saw what he’d done. He had prepared himself mentally for the handcuffs, the cop car, the return to a jail cell – it would be easier this time, knowing it would only be temporary, knowing he could survive it, for he had already survived so much worse. 

But he couldn’t go to it willingly if he didn’t find out the truth. He had to know. He had to see with his own eyes. 

“Don’t move a fucking muscle, Hannibal,” he said. “You can’t outrun them, and you’ll only hurt yourself. I’ll be back.”

“Take your time,” Hannibal said. “I am in no rush.”

Will took the stairs two at a time, his heart in his throat. The first three doors he checked were unlocked, the rooms empty. The fourth door was locked. 

Steeling himself, he aimed the gun at the lock and fired. He put the gun on the floor; he didn’t want to be armed when they came for him. It took a moment before he could bring himself to open the door. He wasn’t sure his sanity could take it if she was dead after all. 

He pushed the door open.

The room was small and dimly lit. A splinter of light crept in between heavy drapes, illuminating a girl tucked into bed, her eyes closed. An intravenous drip hung on pole beside the bed.

She was pale and still as death. Will closed his eyes, tears brimming in them. 

“Abigail…?” he whispered.

A silence. Then the girl stirred. 

Her eyes opened, dazed at first but becoming clearer. Then she saw him.

“W-Will? Is that you? You look…” She broke off, her lip trembling. 

He crossed the room in three quick strides, barely daring to believe she was real. He could see the lump beneath the sheets where her arm ended at the elbow. But she was breathing. Breathing, and almost whole. Just like him. 

“You’re alive,” he said, a lump in his throat. 

“I could... say the same about you. I didn’t think you’d make it.”

“Neither did I.” 

She wet her lips. Her voice was raspy from disuse. 

“He told me we had to frame you. He told me it was the only way. He said they were coming for me, and… I was so scared. So I just did what he told me. But he promised it wouldn’t go too far. And I believed him.”

“It’s not your fault.”

She shook her head, distraught. “I didn’t think they’d actually send you away. I didn’t think they’d…” The first tears began to spill down her pallid cheeks. “They almost killed you.”

He settled on the edge of the bed and put a hand on her shoulder. He could barely believe she was real. He could feel the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. Her skin smelled faintly of mint. 

“I never once blamed you. When I thought that I’d hurt you… That was the worst time for me. Believing that I’d done that… But you helped me. When I was losing my mind… When I was about to die… I spoke to you. Or I imagined I did. It was the thought of you that kept me together.”

“I dreamt of you…” she murmured. “He told me I needed to sleep… That he’d wake me when you’d come around. I didn’t really understand what was happening, only that I didn’t have an option except to trust him.”

She paused, struggling to articulate her experience, her capacities still sluggish from whatever drugs he’d given her. When she spoke again, her words were slow and halting, as if she was reciting a speech she’d been told, half-remembered, barely understood, something beyond her own self. 

“I woke in the fresh-smelling semi-dark, and I knew I was near the sea… Day and evening again, there was the smell of fresh flowers and the vague awareness of a needle bleeding into me. I was awake and not awake. Sometimes I heard faint chamber music. Sometimes I was afraid, but not often. He treated me very well. Even when he took my arm. He told me what he was going to do. That he needed it to save you. I gave it willingly. 

“And then when I slept, I dreamt of you. You were also awake and not awake… Yourself, and not yourself. I could see you, but you weren’t really there… Or I wasn’t really there… I was never sure. We were in that nowhere place together. And you were so upset. You were so scared. They took your hair. Then they took you to the room at the end of the hall.”

Her voice was barely a whisper. She was crying and so was he. The sirens were right outside the house. They heard the police burst in downstairs. Will swallowed, his eyes slipping closed a moment, then climbed to his feet. There were footsteps on the stairs.

“Don’t leave me,” Abigail said. 

“I have to. I have to go away for a little while,” Will murmured, putting his hands behind his head and sinking to his knees just as the cops burst through the door, screaming at him to do exactly what he was doing. Abigail was trying to rise, but she was too weak. An officer put his hands on her.

“Don’t hurt her!” Will yelled, as they handcuffed him and dragged him to his feet. He heard her begging them to leave him alone, her fragile voice thin as a distant scream carried on the wind. Then he was pulled from the room and lost sight of her.

His hands cuffed behind his back, an officer holding each arm and reminding him of his rights, he was frogmarched down the stairs. They had just reached the bottom when Brauer burst through the front door, looking pale and anxious. Freddie was with him. 

“This is a crime scene, you can’t be in here,” one the officers began, taking his hands off Will a moment to shoo the pair back outside. To Will’s immense surprise, his lawyer pushed the man away and stepped deeper into the house, his eyes falling at once to the blood trail on the floor. He dragged his hands down his face. 

“Tell me you didn’t kill him,” he said, almost a plea. 

“I didn’t kill him,” Will said, with a small smile. “I came to confront him. He let me into his house. We were talking, and then I heard a woman calling for help. He drew a knife on me. It’s on the floor over there; his prints are on it. I shot him in self-defence. I followed the woman’s voice and found Abigail Hobbs. Alive. She's upstairs.” 

Relief flooded Brauer’s face. Shaking off the officer who had once again tried to extricate him from the scene, he pulled Will into an awkward, one-sided embrace. 

“How much of that is true?” he murmured, so quiet that only Will could hear.

“Enough,” came the reply. 

It took both officers to pry Brauer off Will, threatening to arrest him for obstruction if he wouldn’t leave. The lawyer was so full of adrenaline and anger from the events of the previous day, months, years that he almost took it as a challenge. 

“Go on then! Arrest me!” he shouted, thrusting out his wrists. “I’d be delighted to spend a night in a jail cell with my client – an innocent man who just caught the monster who framed him! The media would love it! Arrest me, please!”

They did not arrest him, merely dragged Will out the door and pushed him into the back of a patrol car. Will was perfectly calm. Brauer tried to get into the back of the car with him, then yelled to him that he’d get him out by morning as two burly officers hauled him behind the line of crime scene tape they’d just unspooled. Freddie got a couple of good shots of the house and of Will in the car before she too was booted behind the tape lines. Hoping to avoid further drama, Will was whisked away to the station without delay. 

He missed the arrest of Dr Lecter, but would later see it played out beautifully in Freddie’s pictures.

*

Hannibal was no longer in the kitchen when the cops kicked down his door. He was in a lot of pain, but adrenaline and general distaste at the idea of incarceration can get a man quite far. He had made it all the way outside when Alana found him.

Whether she had come for him, or for Will, she was never sure. She liked to think it was for Will, to stop him doing something he would regret forever. But she couldn’t deny that she’d feared for Hannibal’s life as well. She’d known where Will would be as soon as Brauer told her he was missing. She knew Will almost better than anyone. 

She arrived at the house before the police got there, her presence so quiet that Will did not hear her enter from his place at Abigail’s bedside upstairs. She did not call out. When she saw the dark pools of blood in the entranceway, she believed she was too late. Fearing the worst, she followed the trail into the kitchen, and it was there that she learned the truth about Dr Lecter. 

It is a difficult thing to have our entire understanding of a person turned upside down in an instant. Alana felt it as a snap within herself, of something bending and breaking, leaving a ragged edge in its place which would always be there, even years later when she was happily married and had put Dr Lecter behind her. It was deeply painful, but Alana was a strong woman, and knew with a pragmatism that is admirable that she would survive this. She surveyed the gory spectacle on the countertop a moment longer, then selected a knife from the block and followed the blood trail out the open patio doors. 

“Hannibal.”

She called his name without fear, or hatred, or sadness. These emotions would come later. For now, she had hidden her heart behind a thick callus to protect it from further harm. She tried not to think about what they’d had together. All the times she had bared her soul to him. The long nights when she had cried herself to sleep worrying about Will after their love making, and he had held her. Comforted her. Lied to her. 

The man she saw before her did not inspire fear. Will had seen to that. Hannibal’s face was bone-white and pained. He’d lost an awful lot of blood and was teetering on the brink of unconsciousness. His sweat-damp hair hung dishevelled over his eyes. She felt no pity for him. Not anymore. 

“Alana. I hoped it would not come to this.”

“You knew,” she said. “You knew he was innocent, and you let that happen to him.”

Hannibal huffed out a breathless laugh. “You let it happen as well. Because it was convenient. What kind of a person does that make you?”

Her lip trembled. “You son of a bitch. I came here to stop him killing you.”

“Are you here now to finish the job?” 

She looked down at the knife in her hand. Part of her wanted to. Even now, so soon after her discovery of his true nature, she could barely stand the thought that she’d let him touch her. She’d have to live with that knowledge, those memories. She wanted to stab and stab until she silenced him forever, so he’d never again remind her of it. 

But Will had left him alive. Will clearly wanted Hannibal to suffer the same fate that he himself had been subjected to. After everything he’d been through, he deserved to have his wishes honoured.

She let the knife drop from numb fingers. Hannibal’s lips twisted into a smile. 

“Letting Will down again.”

“No. Just savouring the thought of you rotting in a prison cell,” Alana said, stepping closer until she was right in front of him. “They’ll give you the federal death penalty you know. Won’t that be ironic?”

Hannibal said nothing, glaring up at her. 

“Would you have killed me?” Alana asked, unable to stop herself, a slight quiver in her voice.

His eyes were cold. “You assume I’m not still planning to.”

Her lip trembled. She could hear the police bursting through the front door. The warm circle of safety and security beckoned, with Hannibal far beyond its reach. Except that wasn’t true, and she knew it. She’d never be completely safe from him. Nobody would. 

She turned her back on him, ready to walk away. 

“I’ll write to you,” Hannibal called. “In case you forget.”

Alana hesitated only a moment, then she turned back, and kicked him hard in the head. The sharp heel of her shoe caught him just above the eye, drawing blood. There would be a scar.

He was out cold when the paramedics found him. When he regained consciousness many hours later, he was chained to a hospital bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter left.
> 
> I really enjoyed all your theories after the last chapter. This chapter was mostly an excuse to kick Hannibal's ass. I hope it is as satisfying to read as it was to write. 
> 
> I wanted to imply a slight mysticism in Will and Abigail's relationship, because I think there's a little of that in the show (like the priest who looks right at her in season 3, when she's already dead). So perhaps she was more than just a hallucination when Will was going crazy in prison. Hopefully I left it vague enough that you can interpret it however you like. 
> 
> My apologies for the long delay between posting. The final chapter is almost ready and will be up soon. As always, I'd like to express my sincerest appreciation for all your kind words. Thank you so much for reading.


	26. Epilogue

_Eighteen months later_

It was not yet noon, and already the day was set to be a scorcher. Freddie drove with the windows rolled down and her hair billowing loose around her face, admiring the view from behind designer shades. It was difficult to tell where the ocean ended and the sky began. She had never been anywhere that felt more open and boundless and free. She could see why Will had chosen it.

She had been out here twice before, briefly, since Will bought the ramshackle little house in the Keys, but this was the first time she was visiting on business. It had taken weeks of gentle prodding and persuasion to get Will to agree to talk to her on the record again, and she knew he still wasn’t entirely happy about it. She could have ambushed him of course, but she would never do that. Perhaps in the old days. But she respected him too much, and valued his friendship such that she would do nothing to damage it. He had relented because he owed her one, and he knew it. His portion of the royalties had set him up for the rest of his life. 

The book had been (and, indeed, still was) an unprecedented success. The fact that it had hit shelves only days after esteemed psychiatrist and notable Baltimore socialite Dr Hannibal Lecter was indicted on multiple murder charges certainly helped. Will had just spent a highly publicised night in jail – Brauer kept his promise that he would have Will out by morning, his bail set low because no judge in the county wanted to be seen being harsh on a mentally ill death row exoneree – and the aggravated assault charges were quickly dropped when the true extent of Lecter’s crimes became apparent. Several news anchors voiced the opinion that Graham was a hero, and that opinion stuck. By the time the book appeared on shelves, everybody in the country knew who Will Graham was; with a cover bearing a picture of him staring directly out at the reader, his eyes red-rimmed and haunted, it was no real surprise when it rocketed to the top of multiple bestseller lists almost overnight. 

That cover was the one thing she and Will had ever fallen out over since they became friends. The picture was his mugshot, taken after he was first arrested. He was dressed in the bright orange coveralls they’d given him at the county jail, looking pale and frightened, still tortured by the prospect that he might have killed Abigail Hobbs. It was a harrowing picture. 

Will hated it. He wasn’t fond of any of the others either, not really, but he could live with those. The back cover featured a stark black-and-white photo of Freddie standing beside the electric chair, staring defiantly out as if challenging the casual viewer to debate her about its merits. And she had not gone light on the inserts. Alongside various courtroom sketches and her own clandestine shots of Lecter leaving the prison during his visitation, Counsellor Brauer had given her access to all the pictures he’d taken of Will’s decline over the years, and most of them had found their way into the book. As Freddie described the horror of an innocent man’s experience on death row, the torturous hours he’d spent in the black depths of solitary confinement, his long walk to the death chamber and the agonising period of uncertainty after the stay of execution, readers could watch the healthy, attractive man pictured in the first chapter gradually unravel, growing gaunter, thinner, the hope draining from his eyes. But those pictures, painful though they were for Will, were trapped safely between almost four hundred pages of dense narrative. The cover was another story. 

Freddie understood why Will hated the cover. He had never expected to live to see the book’s publication, and knowing his face was everywhere (and particularly a picture associated with such horrific memories) made him deeply uncomfortable. He asked her to put Lecter on the cover but she refused; it was Will’s story, and Lecter was only really a footnote throughout most of it – an intriguing footnote, but a footnote nonetheless. He requested that if she had to put his face on the front, he’d rather it be almost any other picture than his mugshot; she pointed out that it was public record and was all over the news anyway, so what did it matter? Finally she’d put her foot down and told him she was using it and really he couldn’t stop her. He had not spoken to her for a while after that, but time had softened the blow. Freddie had, after all, given him half of her substantial advance from her publisher, which paid for the house, and continued to pay him thirty percent of the royalties as promised even as the book went into its second, third and fourth reprint. 

She knew he did not keep a copy of the book in the house. She had sent him one, with a note attached saying that he didn’t have to read it, but she wanted him to have it. He had not responded. The book was nowhere to be seen when she first visited. She had not brought it up. 

Will had read it, cover to cover, though he never told her. He read it only once, then he took it out back and he burned it. It wasn’t that it was bad, quite the opposite in fact. Freddie had done her research, and the account was truly disturbing. Will burned it in an act of catharsis. As he watched the pages curl and blacken, he felt for the first time that he might finally be able to put that part of his life behind him. When the thing was gone and only ashes remained, he scooped them up and walked barefoot down the beach to the sea, where he scattered them. Then he sat down in the sand and wept. Things had been easier since then. 

Though she didn’t like that it made Will uncomfortable, Freddie’s instincts had all been correct. The book had sold, and sold incredibly well. Lecter’s arrest had been the gift which kept on giving; it took months for Will’s face to stop being a staple of every news outlet as more and more grisly details unfurled and the injustice which had been done to Will became all the more terrible. The tapes of Freddie’s sessions with Will played endlessly. Freddie did a press tour and signed books until her hand hurt. It was so successful that her publicist extended it across a dozen more cities. She appeared on talk shows and spoke to book clubs and abolitionist groups along the way. She told riveted crowds how it felt to attend Will’s would-be execution, knowing in her heart that not only was he innocent, not only was she powerless to save him, but that the real killer was sitting in the room with her. A shiver would run through the crowd when she mentioned how Dr Lecter had turned round in his seat to look right at her. Over and over and over again, she described seeing Will, her friend, strapped in the electric chair, and it never became less painful. She had always planned to cry for the crowds, but was surprised to find that the tears came entirely involuntarily, and were genuine.

She briefly considered therapy when the nightmares about that night did not go away, but Will’s experience with a psychiatrist had put her off for life. 

The book had been on shelves less than a month when she was approached about a movie deal. She sold the rights for a more than satisfying amount, and even filmed a cameo as a placard-waving protestor outside the prison. Production was sped up to make sure the release would coincide with Lecter’s sensational trial, and with all the free publicity and interest around the case, the opening weekend’s box office was enormous. It had already picked up several awards and was expected to attract more. 

When Freddie told Will this, he had merely shrugged. He had no interest in the film, and had been incensed when the production contacted him because the lead actor wanted to meet him for character study. He was sent an invite to the premiere, but no one was at all surprised when he ignored it. Freddie was there, in a stunning black velvet Givenchy gown. For the record, she thought that ‘that British guy’ – as Will so charmingly referred to the actor who portrayed him – did an impressive job recreating Will’s ticks and mannerisms based on her descriptions alone. And she certainly wasn’t complaining about taking part in another press tour, nor the spike in book sales which coincided with the film’s release.

Five months had passed since then. The film was out of theatres. Lecter’s trial had come and gone. The book was still selling copies, but things had died down. Freddie was looking for the next step, the next story, the next chapter in her life. This was proving more difficult than she had anticipated.

She could keep doing what she had always done, of course. TattleCrime readership was at an all-time high, and ad sales were racking up nicely. There was no shortage of terrible deeds out there just waiting to be exploited – some sicko over in Birmingham had just killed an entire family, kids dead in their beds, the whole shebang. Plenty of material there. 

Except… She couldn’t really put her hesitancy into words. All she knew was that she was tired of that game, tired of chasing crime scenes and wading through blood. Freddie had never been a woman overly burdened with guilt or conscience, but something had snapped in her the night of Will’s execution. She was not the same person she’d been when she first stepped into the prison to visit him, eager for the sordid details. 

She had some thinking to do. In the meantime, an august newspaper over in New York had contacted her inquiring if there was any chance she could get an interview out of Will to discuss his experiences and how he was readjusting to life on the outside. The death penalty issue had reared its ugly head again and was making headlines after a botched execution in Georgia had left an inmate suffering on the table for well over an hour before the lethal injection finally killed him. The paper was doing a lengthy retrospective on the failure of the capital punishment system in recent years, and Will was its most high profile exoneree. Counsellor Brauer had been correct in his assertion: Will Graham had indeed put a face on the death penalty, and it seemed impossible to have a discussion about it without his name being brought up. He was a figure of intense sympathy. 

He was also notoriously uncooperative with press and impossible to find in the first place – he’d gone to great lengths to disappear after Lecter’s arrest, with any mail being forwarded through the FBI long before it reached him. There were about ten people in the world who knew where he lived these days, and Freddie was one of them. 

Will’s stance on the death penalty was already well documented, and he did not speak to reporters. But for Freddie, he would make an exception. 

Her rented car raised a thin dust that settled on the bushes beside the shell road as she pulled up beside the house. She was just stepping out when Will appeared from the garage, wiping motor oil from his hands with a rag. He eyed her cagily for a moment, before his face cracked into a smile.

“Freddie. It’s good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you too.” She paused, recalling something she had said to him during her first visit to the prison. “It’s good to see you out here. That outfit suits you.” 

Will chuckled, remembering that previous discussion very well. But she wasn’t lying; it _was_ good to see him, and especially like this. He was barefoot, shirt unbuttoned over his chest; his skin, once so pale, had tanned to a warm golden brown, and he had put on some much needed weight and muscle mass. He could not looked father removed from the man who had walked out of death row in his courtroom clothes and his lawyer’s coat with skin as pale as moonlight. He looked healthy. And best of all, his hair had grown back, though it had done so with a grey streak at the temple which had not been there before. 

He pushed his hand through it now, grinning. 

“Beer?” 

“I’d love one.”

He tossed the rag back into the garage and climbed the steps up his front porch, Freddie following at his heels. The salt-silvered wood creaked ominously beneath their weight. The house had been a wreck when Will bought it and gave it a lick of paint, and there always seemed to be something needing repaired. But that was the way Will liked it. He spent most of his days drinking whiskey and replacing broken floorboards, retiling parts of the roof, filling cracks in the plaster. Other days he took the boat out and fished, or else tended the small garden he kept out back. Sometimes he fixed boat motors for folks in the nearby town. He wasn’t short of money and refused to take payment; the truth was, he just liked the work. It kept him busy. The neighbours took to reimbursing him with home-cooked casseroles and baked goods for his trouble, and both sides were content with this arrangement. 

Two wicker chairs sat out on the wide front porch, a wobbly table between them with a cooler beneath it. Will dug a couple of cold beers out and cracked them open, setting them on the table. Freddie had yet to sit down. They eyed each other for a moment, then Freddie opened her arms. Will wrapped her in a tight hug. 

“You’re sweaty,” she said, but she was smiling.

When they broke apart and sat down, Freddie removed a small tape recorder and notepad from her bag, but set them to one side. For now, she was just happy to see him. Business could wait. 

“You look really good,” Will said. “Fame suits you.”

She tossed her shining curls over her shoulder and took a sip of her beer. “The wardrobe upgrade has certainly been a pleasant consequence of all this. One of the few.”

“I’ll just be happy if I never see another white jumpsuit in my life. I never gave a thought to what I was wearing before going to prison; I’d just wake up and throw on whatever was close at hand. Now I can’t tell you good it feels just to have _options_.” 

He smiled pensively as he spoke, his eyes sweeping the broad expanse of beach that served as his front garden. A breeze tousled the tall grasses that shivered amongst the dunes. Herons circled above the lightly lapping waves. The water was as blue as it had been in his dreams. 

He loved this place, as only a man who has experienced captivity can love a place where he can be free. Sitting here, a cold beer on the table sweating in the heat, the smell of the ocean in his nose and the warmth of the sun on his face, those endless days spent trapped in his cell felt very far away. Impossibly far. But still he returned there relentlessly in his nightmares. 

“Is Abigail around?” Freddie asked.

Will shook his head, his eyes still fixed on the water. “She has a job over in Marathon. Dress shop, couple days a week. Keeps her busy, let’s her be around other girls. She’ll be back before supper.”

“She doing okay?”

“About as well as she could be, considering.”

“Do you believe her story?”

Will watched five waves lap the beach before answering. “Mostly. There are plot holes.”

“How are you filling them?”

He took a long sip of beer. “I don’t think about it and she doesn’t talk about it, and we’re both happier that way. I don’t know how complicit she was with him, and I don’t want to know. I’d guess that in the beginning at least, she went along with what he told her because she thought it was the best way to stay alive. Maybe she thought it was the best way to keep me alive as well. I don’t know. What matters is that he was using her to hurt me, and she got hurt in the process. We’re both recovering from what he did to us.”

“I wouldn’t do anything to implicate her, you know that. Hell, I took most of the material about her out of the book, like you asked me to. I’m just curious.”

“So were the FBI. Jack believes she helped her father kill those girls, and he isn’t the only one. They only dropped the investigation into her because of her ties to me. They looked bad enough already for what happened without arresting the traumatised young woman who’d been held captive by Hannibal Lecter for three years as well. They don’t dare come near either one of us.”

“She got lucky.”

“Yes. She did.”

They both sipped their beers. A shadow had fallen over the conversation. The name had been mentioned; there was no going back.

“Can we talk about Lecter?” Freddie asked.

He looked at her with weary resignation. “On or off the record?”

“On. Though if there’s anything you don’t want me to include in the article, just tell me. I won’t be making the tape public. They only want a few thousand words from me, and I don’t intend to open any of the cans of worms we’ve all just finished closing.”

“Alright then.”

She reached for her tape recorder and turned it on. “The date is June twenty-third. It’s been a little over eighteen months since the exoneration of Will Graham. Five months ago, Dr Hannibal Lecter, the man responsible for the crimes that Will Graham was wrongly convicted of, was finally taken to trial. That seems like a good place for us to start.”

“Mmm.”

“You were at the trial.”

“Yes. All sixteen days of it.”

“And you testified.”

“I did. I had to.”

“You didn’t want to?”

“When I was led of Lecter’s house in a pair of handcuffs, I considered my involvement in his life and vice versa to be at an end. I had no desire to see him again. But the prosecutor said my testimony was important given how sympathetic I would appear to the jury and how evil it would make Lecter look in comparison, and I pointed out that I can’t look that sympathetic or I wouldn’t have been found guilty and sentenced to death in that very same courtroom – and besides, juries tend to find me sarcastic, ill-tempered and unforthcoming, to quote my own lawyer on the matter. And I could tell that the prosecutor wanted to call me uncooperative and a number of other words, but he was too afraid to, because people are more afraid of me these days than when they thought I was a murderer.” 

He sighed, scratching his beard. “Don’t put that in the article.”

“Wasn’t gonna.”

“I didn’t want to see him, but I wanted to see him put away for life,” Will amended. “They had enough to convict him a dozen times over, with or without my testimony, but everyone expected me to testify so I did.”

“Were you satisfied with the verdict?”

Will shot her a look. “The needle was guaranteed, and he beat it all on an insanity plea. What do you think?”

“Did you want him to get death? Would it have provided closure for you?”

“It’s not about closure. Closure is a made-up word. I don’t believe I could ever have it. Watching Lecter get strapped to a table and pumped full of chemicals would hardly have given me back the three years he took from me. Wouldn’t have brought any of them back from the dead either – Georgia, Marissa, all the others. The Bureau could have patted themselves on the back for finally nailing the bastard, so maybe there would have been closure for them, I don’t know. Jack was certainly gunning for it. He was furious.” 

Freddie made a note on her pad. “Talk me through your feelings on the verdict. In an ideal world, what would the sentence have been?”

A reflective pause while Will sipped his beer, his eyes very far away. “Yes, part of me wanted him to get death. Let me clarify – I didn’t want to see him _die_. I just wanted him to experience the same hell that he put me through. Oh, he enjoyed it so much when it was happening to me. It would have wiped that smile off his face, sending him there. Letting him suffer that indignity.”

He paused again, frowning. His hands were curled into fists. He was choosing his words very slowly and with great care, feeling the old wounds inside himself ache afresh. He had not talked about Lecter since the trial. He and Abigail did not discuss the man. Yet he haunted the air between them.

“But as you’re well aware, I have become a staunch opponent of the death penalty. It’s difficult not to be.” As he spoke, his knuckle obsessively traced the line under his jaw where the straps had left bruises for weeks. He did not appear aware that he was doing it. Freddie felt a pang of sadness, but said nothing. “So if a guilty verdict had been returned and it had come down to the penalty phase, I would not have advocated for death, no,” he continued, sighing. “He deserved life without parole in a federal penitentiary. I wanted to live the rest of my life knowing he was rotting in there, forgotten, and would die there. Instead, he’s being coddled in a state institution. I spent time there – it’s no cake walk, but it sure beats prison.”

“So you don’t believe Hannibal Lecter is insane?”

“He’s not insane. There isn’t a word for what he is. The papers called him a monster and that’s close enough. He just had a good lawyer who confused the jury.”

“Dr Chilton’s testimony didn’t help.”

Will rolled his eyes. “I’m sure Chilton thought that getting Lecter declared insane would sell more copies of his book. That’s certainly why he elbowed his way into the trial at least. Or maybe he thought Lecter would owe him one, I don’t know. It’s difficult to rationalise that kind of stupidity.”

“He trademarked ‘Hannibal the Cannibal’ you know. As soon as the truth broke.”

“I know. Were you disappointed? I’m sure the thought of a follow-up book had crossed your mind at least once.”

“Crossed it. Crossed right back out. I have no interest in writing about Hannibal Lecter. I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t jump on your story because it was sensational, but after getting to know you, and going through that with you…”

She paused, sipped her beer, struggling to find the right words.

“You changed me, Will. Sure, a book about Lecter would sell – oh boy would it sell. But I just don’t feel up to digging through all that dirty laundry right now. My heart wouldn’t be in it.” Another sip of beer. “That, and I’d prefer to stay alive.”

Will gave a thin smile. With one finger, he idly traced circles in the condensation on his bottle; his eyes were back on the waves. “Lecter’s going to kill Chilton one day. He doesn’t take kindly to Chilton’s brand of self-aggrandizing arrogance. I told Frederick that he was hammering nails into his own coffin by testifying that Lecter was insane but he wouldn’t listen. He’s seen what you managed with the book, and he’s drawn to fame like a moth to a flame. And he’s foolish enough to think Lecter can’t hurt him from in there. He’s going to get a horrible surprise one day.”

“Not if Dr Bloom has anything to do with it. I heard she’s the asylum’s new director. Any thoughts on that?”

Will shrugged. The truth was, he had barely spoken to Alana since his exoneration. When they’d let him out of jail the morning after he shot Lecter, she’d been there to greet him with a change of clothes and his dog, her eyes brimming with tears which she refused to cry. Learning the truth about Lecter had hardened her in a way which he knew was immensely painful for her, like a bone coming together again after a bad break. She’d told him how sorry she was, and he’d told her yet again that he forgave her, but he knew she’d never be able to forgive herself. He’d invited her out to stay with him many times, but always she had an excuse, her guilt driving her away. 

Still, the last time they’d spoken over the phone, she’d told him that she was dating again, a former patient of Lecter’s who was probably just as damaged as she was. They’d met at the trial. The woman hadn’t testified, but Will had seen her observing from the back row, her face veiled. She was beautiful. Alana sounded happy. They seemed good for each other. He’d extended his invitation to include her partner as well, and he hoped this time Alana might accept. 

“I think she’s mad, personally,” Freddie said. 

Will raised his bottle to his lips but hesitated to drink, deep in thought. “There are only five doors between Lecter and the outside. And Alana has the key to every one of them. Hannibal has never been great with boundaries. She doesn’t intend to let him get away on her watch.”

“Who holds the devil, let him hold him well. He will hardly be caught a second time.”

“Faust.”

“Yes. Are you worried about Lecter getting out?”

Will didn’t answer for a while. Freddie didn’t push him. Conversations with Will often contained long gaps, and she did not find them uncomfortable. She knew that he had grown very used to silence on death row. These days, he didn’t speak unless he had something of weight to say.

“I trust Alana,” he said, eventually, finally sipping his beer and setting it back on the table. “She won’t tolerate his games. Hopefully that will be enough.”

The tight set of his shoulders told her how little he wanted to talk about Lecter. She glanced at her notes, and graciously moved on.

“I’m really here to talk about you. How are you doing Will?”

He raised an eyebrow. “I’m alive. I’m not on death row. So, all in all, I’d say I’m doing fine.”

“I know it’s difficult to talk about, but I’d like to talk about the psychological impact that experience had on you. So people might understand.”

“What is there to say? That place almost killed me. I mean, that was the point but…” He broke off, his jaw tight. His eyes were suddenly moist. 

Freddie reached over and touched his arm. “You’re okay. Take your time. We can stop if you want.”

He exhaled, rolling his shoulders. “It’s ridiculous. I’ve been out for over a year and sometimes I still… Sometimes I wake up in the dark and forget where I am, and I’m terrified. I think I’m still there. Some nights I wake up screaming and scare Abigail half to death. There are days when I’ll be out on the boat or working in the garage, and out of nowhere I start thinking about – about – about the chair, about the belts tightening around my – my wrists, my ankles. Under my chin. The way the mask felt against my face... And suddenly I can’t breathe. There’ve been times when Abigail has come home to find me just sitting on the floor or huddled in a corner, and I’m crying and I can’t stop.” 

He swallowed, his lip trembling. His hand was back at his jaw, rubbing now, as if he could still feel the phantom pain of leather straps cutting into his skin. 

“And even now. Even now, sitting on my porch speaking to you… Even now there’s a part of me that’s scared it isn’t real. That they let me go by mistake, and sooner or later they’re going to come for me and take me back there. I know it’s irrational, but that doesn’t matter. I think about it all the time, and I can’t stop.”

Another pause. 

“I’d kill myself if I went back. I think about that a lot, too.”

Freddie took his hand in both her own, stroking comforting circles into his palm with her thumb. She realised her cheeks were damp, and could not remember when she’d started crying. She remembered gripping his hand for what they’d both believed would be the final time on the day before his execution, and was certain in that moment that he was thinking about that too. And though she would never understand the full extent of what he’d been through (and, truth be told, she didn’t want to) she understood enough. She still woke up crying some nights as well. 

“You’re not going back there,” she said. “If they came for you, they’d have to go through me first. Understand?”

He managed a thin smile. “Thanks Freddie.”

“What are friends for?”

They sat like that a moment longer, comfortable in each other’s silence, before Freddie released his hand and flipped through her notes, taking a moment to wipe a stray tear from her face. Will watched her with amusement mingled with genuine, deep affection. His friendship with Freddie was the one good thing that had happened him to as a result of the nightmare he’d been through. He could barely remember why they’d ever butted heads before. 

“Do you have any more questions?”

“Just a couple, then you’re off the hook.”

“Alright. Ask away.”

“The settlement.”

Will chuckled, draining his beer and reaching into the cooler for another. He was still chuckling as he cracked it open. “I’m not telling you how much I got. That was part of the deal.”

“Oh come on, just a hint. It won’t go in the article, I swear.”

“Can’t do it. Speak to my lawyer, he’ll tell you the same thing.”

As he spoke, he gestured further down the beach with his beer. Freddie squinted at where he was pointing. A man in rolled-up suit pants was wading barefoot through the shallows.

“Is that… Is that your lawyer?”

“Leonard!” Will called. The man looked in their direction, raised a hand in acknowledgement, and began to walk up the beach toward them. Will reached for another beer.

“He comes out here every couple of months,” he said. “Always says he’s staying for the week but has never made it past day four. I make a point of being cut off from the world and there’s always some emergency he needs to be in communication for.”

“Matters of life and death, my friend,” Brauer said, climbing up the creaking steps and accepting the beer with a grin. “Afternoon, Miss Lounds.”

“Afternoon, Counsellor. Pleasure to see you.”

“Likewise. Does Will need power of attorney in speaking to you?”

“She wants to know about the settlement,” Will said.

“Oh does she now,” Brauer said, settling on the porch beside them and stretching out one leg. His cheeks bore the rosy glow of a mild sunburn. “Well. I presume you already know that we filed lawsuits both against the federal government and the state of Virginia?”

“Of course.”

“And we absolutely would have won those suits if we’d gone to court. No doubt in my mind. But Will didn’t want to go back to court, and the people we were suing _really_ didn’t want to go to court, so when they started talking out of court settlement – which was immediately – we listened, and we negotiated, and we won those negotiations and we settled.” 

He sighed, still mourning for the courtroom-spectacular that could have been. 

“And?” Freddie said, leaning forward slightly. 

Will and Brauer exchanged an amused glance.

“I would be violating a very stern agreement with the other parties involved if I disclosed the amounts to you, Miss Lounds. But let’s just put it this way. There are certain caps in place to prevent states or the federal government from paying out of the nose for their mistakes. If we’d sued them for three million, for example, which is what I intended to do in both instances – I felt one million for each year he’d spent on death row seemed more than reasonable and would make a nice statement – then they’d still only have to pay damages up to the amount of the cap, even if a jury of fine Americans agreed that the number we came up with was more appropriate. And even when they settle, there’s the limit to how much they can settle for. But we made sure they paid every penny they could, don’t you worry. In both settlements.”

“So what was the cap?” 

“Now, I can’t tell you that. But an intelligent woman such as yourself could definitely find out on her own, were she so inclined.”

Freddie settled back in her chair, chewing her pen. “But you didn’t keep it.”

Will shook his head. “No. I had more than enough from the royalties you gave me. I used part of it to pay my lawyer his fees for the lawsuits, even though he didn’t want to take it, and I’ve still got enough to set me up for life, send Abigail off to college if she chooses that, and still have change. So I didn’t need the money. I wanted to donate it to a non-profit that did death penalty work, and I asked Leonard if he could help me pick one… We got talking. One thing led to another. And he suggested that we set up the foundation.”

Brauer patted his leg. “For the record, Miss Lounds-”

“Please, Freddie.”

“For the record, Freddie, it was entirely his idea. I just came up with the name.”

“I don’t like the name," Will said. "'The Graham Project'. It’s narcissistic. It’s not about me.”

“It is _entirely_ about you, and people like you. Listen, Freddie, we’d love a little free publicity so feel free to discuss the foundation liberally in your article. It’s still in the early stages, but we’ve already found a building for our headquarters and are setting up, we’ve registered the charity. We’ll be taking on plenty of pro bono work, handling appeals for those who can’t afford adequate representation, trying to raise awareness, supporting exonerees trying to put their lives back together, pushing states to repeal their death penalty legislature. Everything I love doing. I can’t wait.”

“You left your firm?”

“I did. Took a couple of associates and my secretary with me as well. We’ve got a few more good people on board already and are building a stellar staff. Abigail wants to work for us. We’ll take her on as an assistant initially, have her doing research, but she’s expressed interest in training to be a paralegal. Girl’s got brains and clout though – I’ll drag her through law school myself if I have to.”

“And how involved will you be, Will?”

Will smiled. “I’ll be as involved as I can be from this stretch of beach. You won’t see me near the building I’m afraid. I don’t think I can stand any more cameras in my face, not for as long as I live. I’d only get under people’s feet anyway. I’m no lawyer.”

“You’re the face,” Brauer said. “That’s all you need to be.”

“I think it will help people,” Will said, shrugging. “That’s the best I can do.” 

Freddie nodded, and turned off her tape recorder. “I think that’s all I need. I’ll be sure to talk extensively about the foundation in the article.

“Is that what you’re doing now?” Brauer said. “Freelancing?”

“A little of this and a little of that. I feel as though everything that happened… It knocked me off my path. Or at least, showed me that it wasn’t a path I wanted to go down anymore. So I’m looking for a new path.”

“You know, we could really use a press officer at the foundation,” Brauer said, casually. “Someone who knows how to get people’s attention, and isn’t afraid to be loud about it. Someone like you.”

Freddie stared at him, surprised and touched. "Are you offering me a job?"

"Yes, and a damned good one. It's a non-profit so you won't get rich - but then I guess you're rich already these days. We'll work hard, but it's the kind of work that makes you feel like you've made a difference at the end of the day. Think about it."

“I think… I think I may just take you up on that.”

Brauer nodded. “Excellent. I’ve had you in mind for a while but you seemed terribly busy with your book tour. I’ll email you a contract to look over, and you can give me your final answer on Monday.”

“I can give you my final answer now.”

She offered a hand, and he shook it, grinning. 

“I’m getting hungry,” Will announced. His mind had drifted during their conversation, and he was staring out at the waves once again. “You’re both staying the night? I’ll fix us something to eat.”

The pair agreed, and Will ducked inside the small house. He stood for a minute in the shade, listening to them talking animatedly outside about the work they were beginning. His friends. He smiled to himself, but gradually the smile slipped from his face. He moved deeper into the house, into the room he slept in at the back, with a door that led out onto the back porch. He hated sleeping in places which felt confined. 

His heart in his throat, he reached into a drawer beside his bed, and removed a letter from where it was hidden beneath a heavy book. He stared at the envelope for a long time, his hands shaking slightly. It was addressed to him, courtesy of the FBI, written in Dr Lecter’s elegant hand. As if he wouldn’t recognise it, the postmark told him where it had come from. 

He’d had it for over a month now, and had not been able to bring himself to throw it away. He should have burned it like he burned the book. But he couldn’t. Nor had he been able to open it.

Sitting on the bed now, he tore it open and fumbled the folded letter from inside. A single sheath. The sound of his friends on the porch was almost inaudible now. Only the ringing in his ears.

>   
>  Dear Will,
> 
> Here we are, you and I, languishing in our prison cells. You and I both know that you never left yours, and if Dr Bloom has her way, I shall never leave mine.  
>  We have all found a new life, but our old lives hover in the shadows, like incipient madness. Soon enough, I fear Jack Crawford will come knocking. A lot of people lost their jobs but not Jack. I would encourage you, as a friend, not to step back through the door he holds open. It’s dark on the other side, and madness is waiting.  
>  Perhaps I will see you soon. 
> 
> I think of you often.  
>  Hannibal Lecter  
> 

The End.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter. What a journey this has been. I apologise for taking so long to finish this; I am currently interning in the US and the last couple of months have been hectic. This final chapter has not been proofread as I've been too busy and just wanted to get it up; if there are glaring errors I will correct them later. As epilogues go, it's a little long, a little wordy - I am fond of this story and could barely bring myself to draw it to a close. But all things eventually end.
> 
> Thank you sincerely for reading, from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for the wonderful responses, the comments and the suggestions - they meant the world to me. I have added a few new illustrations to the text, and intend to add more at a later date. I will also be including some end notes relating to the writing of this piece, as a lot of great people helped/influenced it along the way.
> 
> Thank you for making it to the end. You are a brave soul.

**Author's Note:**

> Well. It’s over. 
> 
> I started writing A Frost of Cares early in 2015, during the long wait between seasons two and three. When the seeds of the idea came to me, I had recently broken my ankle very badly and was feeling trapped and isolated in my small apartment where I lived alone. I dabbled with the first chapter for a while, but hesitated for months before posting it here as I didn’t think there would be any readership for a story of this nature. A few lovely comments encouraged me to continue writing. I thought I would write a few chapters and wrap it up somehow. I did not anticipate that it would turn into the novel-length thing that it did. Moreover, I could never have anticipated the wonderful response I got from readers, particularly those who followed from the beginning and left comments, ideas and encouragement along the way. To everyone who read, commented, left kudos, or just peeked in from time to time – thank you. 
> 
> This story is probably more political than fic has any right to be. I have no doubt that it is an uncomfortable read in places. It’s an uncomfortable topic, and was a disquieting thing to write. While I tried to resist the urge (not always successfully) to get on a soapbox and preach, I’m sure it’s abundantly clear by now that I abhor the death penalty and have spent years actively protesting its usage. 
> 
> While every attempt was made to do the necessary research around the subject, mistakes were inevitably made. Some were entirely intentional, and made for the purposes of storytelling - for example, Will would not have have been imprisoned in Virginia if given the federal death penalty; federal death row is actually in Indiana. Some mistakes I discovered were wrong in the process of writing, as I grew closer to the topic in other ways – Beverly would not, for example, be able to pack and send a box of books herself, though she would have been able to send Will books through Amazon. As such, you may have to suspend your disbelief in places. The Death Penalty Information Center was a hugely helpful resource which I relied on frequently. 
> 
> In addition to this, a number of interesting people helped or influenced this story along the way. Descriptions of Will’s final hours before his execution were informed by discussions with an old contact who worked as a spiritual advisor to men on death row for many years. He sat with dozens of men in the hours before their executions, and he spoke to me about them with a great deal of compassion and humanity which still resonates with me, many years later. The psychological toll which such work has on people was also something I wanted to touch upon briefly in this story, through the characters of Freddie and Brauer in particular. 
> 
> Leonard Brauer appears only very briefly in the show, but I tried to stay true to his character. That being said, my version of him became heavily inspired by a real lawyer and activist I had the great privilege of talking to earlier this year, who has been a huge inspiration to me for many years. Hearing him describe the emotional impact of fighting to the bitter end for his clients and witnessing them die anyway was harrowing. Will’s literal last-minute reprieve, while convenient for dramatic purposes, was inspired by a true story. Brauer’s little comments about what’s wrong with the system (executions taking place while Supreme Court decisions were still pending, for example) were similarly based on real events.
> 
> A great deal of the depictions of Will’s life on death row were informed by correspondences with my former pen-pal in Texas. He was always entirely forthcoming with me about his own experiences. It is difficult to comprehend living that way, and I wanted to depict the psychological impact of life on death row as realistically as possible. It is even harder to imagine suffering that isolation and terror as an innocent man. 
> 
> For further reading on the matter, I’d recommend checking out Sara Rimer’s NY Times article ‘Life After Death Row’ for starters. In addition, John Grisham’s non-fiction book ‘The Innocent Man’ is, I believe, the first book I ever read on the topic, and is a thorough and harrowing account, as is lawyer David R. Dow's 'The Autobiography of an Execution.' I can gladly recommend other books and resources to anyone interested. 
> 
> Since 1973, there have been 156 exonerations of wrongly convicted inmates on death row in the United States. 
> 
> It is estimated that at least 4% of defendants sentenced to death in the United States are innocent (Gross et al, 2014).


End file.
